Legacy
by Agayek
Summary: The Child of Din Djarin learned many things from his father; how to think, feel, and even live. Somehow, he never thought he'd have the chance to pass those lessons on. Until he did.
1. Chapter 1

**Legacy**

**By: Agayek**

Chapter 1

The quiet hiss of the door cracked through the bar like a blaster bolt, snapping everyone's attention to the door, then all the way down to me. I stood there for a moment, feeling them take my measure, a part of me basking in the incredulity my stature and armor together always inspired. It was the work of a moment to find my client, the only lone woman in the room without a drink, and I headed over.

The other patrons lost most of their interest, returning back to their drinks or friends with only the occasional glance, but the woman continued to stare at me as I approached her. With practiced motions, I clambered up the next stool over, one standing nearly twice my own height and made myself comfortable. Confusion warred with surprise and a hint of dismay in the woman as I turned to her and nodded.

"You are Jann Rania, yes?"

"I, uh, yes," she said. She shook herself and brought her emotions back under a semblance of control. "Yes. Sorry. I just - You're... smaller than I expected."

"I am Mandalorian." I waved a hand dismissively. "I need details. What's the target?"

"Right." She blew out a long breath and pushed her doubts down. I didn't fight my satisfied smile at that. She couldn't see it, after all.

"For the last few weeks, we've been attacked periodically by raiders. No one is really sure who they are, but what they want is obvious enough." Her tone was matter of fact, but strained. Outrage, anger, and despair swirled behind a tightly held leash. "They show up, shoot up the place, take whatever food they can get their hands on and disappear again."

"We can deal with raids. We're all lifers out here on the Rim, this isn't the first time we've had to drive off pirates. But it's never been sustained like this. Worse, the attacks are becoming more common, and just last week they started taking _people _as well."

Her gaze ran over me again and she fought to suppress a sigh.

"Even then, we'd be able to manage. If not for this one."

With a brief shuffle, she produced a small holo display and set it on the table. It flickered twice then resolved into the image of a human male of modest height. He had dark skin and hair, with red eyes and a narrow scar running down his upper lip. A vibrosword was held in one hand, while the other fired a blaster somewhere out of the holo. And he wore familiar armor.

"Remnant?" The word slid past my lips before I could stop it. The pitch-black armor of the Death Troopers, the Imperial Remnant's most proficient killers shone with a perverse luminescence, even in the holo.

"Yes. The damn Imp's personally killed half a dozen of us and laid out twice that many. At this rate, we're not going to be able to make it to harvest. We need you to take him down for us. We can handle the rest."

I sighed under my breath. Over two hundred years since Palpatine died, and still the Imperials were a thorn in everyone's side.

"Understood." I nodded to her. "But before I accept, we must discuss payment."

A small bag of credit sticks bounced onto the counter.

"We all chipped in. This is everything we can spare. Please, _help us_."

I picked up the bag and sifted through its contents. It was maybe half of the standard Guild fee. Not nearly enough to risk the Imperials coming after my enclave.

"Not enough," I said after a moment. She winced.

"Please! That's everything we have!"

I shook my head and stood up on the stool.

"Kriffin' mercenaries," a new voice cut in, heavy with alcohol and frustrated rage. Its owner, an older male human slammed a hand on the bar beside me. I turned to face him directly. The thick, but neatly-trimmed beard managed to disguise his ferocious scowl, but there was no disguising the small metal icon dangling from the loop around his neck.

"Mar," Jann stood up and tried to drag the man back, but he pushed her aside to glower down at me.

"I know yer type," he slurred. His fury pulsed over grief and sorrow so thick I could taste it. "Think yer hot shit until faced with something harder than gunning down unarmed children! Then ya piss off back to whatever hole spawned you!"

I stared at the necklace, completely frozen. It was cheap and inexpertly made, but just as clearly made with great attention and care. It was a simple leather strap connected to an elongated metal skull, complete with the pair of enormous tusks that defined the symbol of Mandalore.

I knew that necklace. I knew it better than I knew my own name.

The man made an inarticulate sound and slammed the bar again. "Go on then! Git!"

At last, I pointed at the necklace. "Where did you get that?"

Something of my emotions must have leaked through, because the drunk blinked twice, surprise derailing his anger for the moment.

"T- this thing?" he managed to get out. "I f- found it a couple years back. It turned up in the fields and I, I liked the look of it."

"Done. Give me the necklace, and I will handle the raiders."

The pair of them blinked, glanced at each other, and the man nearly tore off the necklace in his haste, before practically shoving it at me. I plucked it from the man's hand and spent a moment just taking it in.

It felt entirely _right_ to have my father's necklace back in my hands.

Then I looped the leather thong around my neck and tucked it under my armor. I'm not sure how it ended up on this backwater, ten thousand lightyears from where it had been lost well over a century ago, but I wasn't about to lose it again.

I reached back and grabbed the bag of credit sticks off the bar and tossed them over to Jann. She fumbled the bag in surprise, but eventually caught it. She and Mar both stared at me like I'd grown a second head.

"That, that's it? You just want that old thing and you'll drive off all of the bastards?"

I nodded and hopped off the stool. Honor demanded service commensurate to the reward, after all.

"This is the way."

(*)(*)(*)

I stepped out of the bar into the late afternoon sunlight, and even through my armor I felt the chill in the air. Fear had settled over this little hamlet, so deeply and pervasively the air itself carried its taint. It would be a long time before these people were free of it.

With a quiet sigh, I pushed the feeling aside. There wasn't much I could do about it now, and I had a job to do.

Jann hadn't had any biometric data on the target, or even a name, so a tracking fob was out of the question. All they could really tell me was that the raiders retreated to the east, and with just that, I'd be in for a long slog to find them.

But I had options that most hunters lacked.

My eyes drifted closed, and I _reached_. I opened myself fully to the world around me and let it flow through me. Fears, doubts, worries, hopes, dreams, everything the people of this hamlet were washed over me. The sheer vibrancy of _life_ filled my senses in an inexorable tide, and I let it carry me away.

I was a part of the world around me, a single insignificant speck in an impossibly complex web of life. And at the same time, through some quirk of genetics or fate, that web was _also _a part of me. When the need arose, I could guide it as much as it guided me.

I thought of everything I knew of my target. I pictured his face, his role with the pirates, his past with the Remnant. Everything I could think of that made him who and what he is came together in my mind, and with a final exhale, I released it all into the world around me. And with it, I sent out a single thought.

_Where?_

The thought resonated with the world around me, a shimmering chime that raced across the web like lightning. I waited a heartbeat, then two, and the world shifted, ever so slightly.

The sensation was... uncomfortable, as always; a kind of sudden impulse or vertigo that pulled at me, as if the planet's gravity had rotated just enough to notice. With another breath, I opened my eyes and turned into it, soon facing just south of due east.

"Found you."

I padded over and hopped onto my speeder bike, a small custom job I'd had to commission just to have one small enough I could drive it. It had cost entirely too much, but on the plus side, it fit neatly into the _Razor Crest_'s hold and it sure beat walking.

A low purr cracked through the fearful silence of the village until, with a twist of my wrist, I shot forward in an electric roar. I sped down the only street and in a matter of seconds flew past the last building and out into an enormous sea of orange grass taller than I was. Another almost thoughtless motion swung the bike around toward the pull I still felt, and I gave it its head.

As I sped across the grass, toward a rapidly approaching dark smear on the horizon that soon revealed itself to be a forest of some kind, I wondered briefly what to expect when I reached the source of the pull. This method of tracking was rarely the most direct, often leading me in an entirely different direction from my target. But at the same time, it almost always _eventually _ended with my target in my sights, if only after a few intermediate steps.

I preferred a fob, really. I tended to get a better fight out of it that way.

The drive passed in idle daydreams, increasingly elaborate fantasies of where this hunt would take me, culminating in a swan dive into a sarlaac's mouth to save a Jedi princess and get the coordinates of the raiders' camp, until I hit the treeline and was forced to slow down. The trees were enormous leafy things, but spread out, far more than I'd seen in most other forests. The closest pair of trees I could see still had almost two meters between them. What's more, even the branches were concentrated toward the top, forming a dense canopy but leaving the bottom few meters almost entirely bare. All I had to do was weave around the trunks, through gaps with plenty of room to spare.

The only real problem was the darkness.

I entered the woods and abruptly moved from early evening sunlight to the dark of night. What little light made it through the thick canopy overhead, combined with my helmet's low-light enhancements and my more exotic senses, let me see well enough to drive, but only just. I had to cut my speed way back or risk plowing straight into one of the trunks.

The next while passed in boring monotony. The quiet stillness of the forest was broken only by the whine of my speeder and the occasional gust of wind. From time to time, I'd stumble upon signs of recent activity; scraped off bark, half a footprint in the mud, etcetera. I counted at least four distinct individuals that way, at least two of which were not wearing armor, but it was hard to tell any more than that. Combined with the ever-greater pull I still felt, I was confident I was headed in the right direction.

Maybe it was even taking me straight to the target this time.

Soon enough, however, the pull reached fever pitch, and I let the speeder drift to a halt. The forest was too quiet to bring it any closer, or I'd give the game away. I marked the coordinates on my helmet's nav system, and proceeded the rest of the way on foot.

It took maybe half a minute before I was thoroughly sick of crawling over roots. A big part of me wanted to climb the trees and just run along the branches, but that would have been just as noisy as the speeder. I settled for the occasional muttered curse at a universe made for people three times my size.

Only halfway through my second iteration of the Oath of Vengeance, however, I could feel new presences intrude upon my senses. Boredom, bravado, and a perverse amusement rang most prominent, while one mind burned with fury, fear, and grief.

That was it.

I pushed forward, careful to stay concealed, and in only a few minutes, found myself looking over a small clearing. Twilight was just beginning to settle over it and a handful of sentients were spread around, none of which were the Imperial Jann had singled out. A zabrak and three humans, all four in a hodge-podge of black and green just similar enough to feel like uniforms, were lounging around a good-sized fire, idly chatting while an animal carcass of some species I didn't recognize roasted above it. A pair of large canvas tents, complete with strewn bedrolls, stood silently behind them.

Another pair of humans in the same quasi-uniform were off to the side, standing guard with rifles in hand near a repurposed speeder. The passenger compartment had been torn out to turn it into a self-propelled sled. A pile of random _stuff_ filled it, weapons, burlap sacks, and even a couple of dried carcasses that matched the one over the fire. It had to be the loot from their most recent raid.

What really got my blood boiling though, was the metal pole driven into the ground nearby, and the human girl chained by the neck to it.

She was young, barely into her pubescence, with pale skin and shockingly red hair. Her clothing was rough but well made, the cut and quality reminiscent of the villagers who had hired me, and it had seen better days. Singed and scuffed, where it wasn't outright torn, she had clearly not been treated gently.

Outrage pulsed through me. I hadn't expected much better after what Jann had said, but even still. There was no honor in slavery, no value in servitude.

I would end these pirates for it.

Resolve set, I backed up carefully and performed a quick circuit of the clearing, both my eyes and more exotic senses peeled for any patrolling sentries. I wasn't expecting pirates like this to have set up a patrol, not after months of uneventful preying on that village, and they seemed to live down to my expectations yet again. I found no sign of one.

Secure in the knowledge that my back was clear, I quietly scrambled up one of the trees and perched on one of the lowest branches. My blaster found its way into my hand, I drew a bead and I settled in to wait for a good opportunity.

I didn't have to wait long.

The pair by the sled, what counted for first watch for these pirates, began to chat, completely ignoring the girl's sullen, angry stare.

"Think we'll make it back in time for the tournament?" the woman said. She sat down on the sled and made herself more comfortable.

"Probably." The man kept standing, facing toward the woman without actually looking at her. I held very still as his gaze swept over my hiding place. "Shuttle's supposed to land, what, 9:30? 10? Plenty of time to make the trip back, if we hurry."

He kicked the side of the sled absently.

"We can all pile in and ride this thing back once we've emptied it too, should make the trip shorter."

The woman snorted and kicked some dirt at the girl. "Not having to drag this bitch around will make it shorter."

The girl _exploded_ out of the dust.

She launched herself forward with a shriek of rage that cut off into a gurgle as she hit the limit of her chain. And the rock she'd thrown in that instant, a solid stone maybe the size of a human fist, tumbled through the air to smash into the woman's chin.

She had barely begun to scream in pain and rage when I fired.

A lance of brilliant red shot across the clearing and caught the man in the chest. He collapsed with a scream of his own, which was quickly joined by shouts of surprise and fear from the men around the fire. They scrambled to their feet, fumbling for their weapons, while the woman leapt at the girl, smashing her gun into the girl's face.

A second shot slammed into the woman's neck. She collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut, almost collapsing directly on top of the girl.

One of the surviving pirates had caught the source of the bolt though. I felt his attention moments before he cried out and they all zeroed in on me. I threw myself off the branch and into the clearing bare meters ahead of the blaster bolts that tore through the foliage.

The pirates tried to follow my fall, stitching the air around me in rivers of red. I landed in a roll and didn't even bother to wipe the grin off my face. Nothing would ever beat this feeling.

The instant I came to my feet, I was running, zigging and zagging toward them in erratic lines. Blasterfire flew by me in all directions, sometimes nearly kissing my armor, but none ever quite reached me. I was a part of the universe, and it was a part of me. The pirates' every move, every plan was laid bare to me, perhaps even before _they_ knew it. Avoiding their fire was simply a matter of will.

I could no more be struck than I could punch myself in the face.

The skill had come quite naturally to me. Enough so that I had been almost a century old before I'd truly internalized that most of the time, people _didn't want_ to be hit.

"What the hell is that thing?!" one of the pirates demanded as I crossed the halfway mark, though he was at least professional enough to keep firing.

"Dead." The zabrak growled and slowed his fire, trying to focus his aim.

I took the opportunity to fire off a snapshot that flew past one of the humans' ears. He yelped and flinched, and the volume of fire dropped even more.

My grin turned savage.

I twisted and leapt, using my powers to fling myself into the air. Their surprise lasted for three heartbeats.

It took me two to line up the shot.

The first human to speak took the blaster bolt in the eye and collapsed without a sound. A spike of outrage, and no small amount of fear, rushed through the remaining three, even as their guns swung up toward me. The zabrak started to grin, sure that I couldn't dodge in mid-air.

That's when I fired my grapple at him.

The line wrapped around him in a heartbeat and almost instantly started to reel me in. Blaster fire from the other two shot past centimeters behind me, and I dismissed them entirely.

I landed feet first into the zabrak's face. With a wet crack, his nose shattered under my boot. He had enough time to make a sound, a mix of pain and rage, before I fired a fifth shot into his forehead. I rode the body down, tumbling off it and out in between the two humans.

They both started to back up.

The one on my left dropped his gun and started to raise his hands, while the one on my right tore a commlink from his belt and started to speak.

"Boss! We're under at-"

Two more blaster bolts flashed through the clearing and a pair of bodies struck the floor.

Adrenaline still roared in my blood. Fire danced under my skin. I wanted, desperately, for one of them to get back up and continue the fight. To dance along the razor's edge once more.

With a quiet exhale, I focused. Discipline. Honor. Truth. The Creed. I would not be compromised by such petty wants.

I was Mandalorian.

I stood up, holstered my blaster, and, with another breath, began to walk over to the girl. She had kicked the woman's corpse away, and now was staring at me with an expression I'd rarely seen before.

"Who- What do you want?" she asked, alight with fear, hope and awe in equal measure. She shone like a beacon in my senses, clearer than almost anyone I'd ever encountered before.

I looked at her, let her stare at her reflection in my helmet until, with a moment of focus and a quiet squeal, the collar around her neck twisted open and fell to the ground behind her.

"Jann Rania put a bounty on their heads. I accepted it."

"Miss, Miss Rania?" Relief flooded through her, even as she scrambled away from the pole and its chain.

I nodded, then gestured at the sled.

"Can you drive this thing?"

"I- I think so."

"Town is that way." I pointed. "Go straight until you leave the trees and you'll be able to see it from there."

"Wait, what? What about you?"

"I still have work to do."

"Then I'm helping." She scowled down at me. Stubborn determination was etched into every line of her face, she exuded it in an almost conscious wave. "They murdered my family. I am going to help you take those bastards down."

I sighed. I'd seen that look more than once.

"You don't even know where the base is!" she shot back. "I spent all day hiking away from it. I can show you how to get there!"

At the same moment, the pulling sensation, the faint tug I'd followed all the way out here, rippled through me once more.

I sighed again, already resigned. This was going to be a pain, I just knew it.

"Fine." I walked over, picked up the woman's discarded rifle, and tossed it at the girl. She yelped in surprise and nearly fumbled it, but managed to recover. "You do what I say, when I say it, and you don't ask questions. Got it?"

She quickly checked and safed the rifle with practiced ease, then nodded at me. She didn't smile so much as bare her teeth.

"Do you have a name, kid?"

"Mara," she replied. "Mara Jade."


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Dawn light, pale and thin as it was, trickled through the thick canopy and into the makeshift camp I'd nearly had to force the girl- Mara, I corrected myself- into. I had wanted to press on last night, get the job done. But yesterday's forced march had taken its toll on her and once the adrenaline faded barely twenty minutes into the ride, she'd passed out.

Given that she'd been awkwardly folded around the back of my speeder at the time, that had very nearly killed both of us.

After I finished calling myself seven different kinds of idiot, I'd overruled her protests and dragged her off a ways to sleep for the rest of the night. Then I sat down and meditated, letting my awareness flow out in a half-conscious doze while the energy of the world around me revitalized me. It was an old Jedi trick I'd picked up years ago. It wasn't quite as good as a proper night's sleep, but it did the job well enough and left me alert enough respond to any threats that might present themselves.

None did, however, and I rose with the sun.

"Wake up," I said as I pulled the purloined bed roll off Mara. She mumbled something incoherent and rolled back over.

So with a twist of my wrist and a moment of focus, I flicked the entire bedroll into the air and tossed her out of it.

She hit the ground with a yelp, more surprised than anything else and scrambled to her feet. Her hair whipped wildly through the air as she turned frantically. Shock and fear flashed through her in equal measure, enough so that I started to almost feel bad about it.

Then she caught sight of me and the fear melted into relief.

"What was that for?!" she demanded, pinning me with an annoyed look.

"Time to go," I said. She scowled and opened her mouth but I continued before she could speak. "Go back to town if you don't like it."

She scowled harder, but shook her head.

"I'm awake now."

I nodded and tossed her a nutrient bar.

"Good." I hopped on the speeder and gestured with my head. "Get on and eat while we ride."

She grumbled quietly, but complied, shoving the bar into her mouth and climbing onto the speeder behind me. It took some doing, but we eventually figured out a setup that was almost comfortable, even if I was practically sitting in her lap while she bent over me to hold onto the speeder. A twist of the handlebars later, we were moving.

Trees passed at a steady clip, just as smoothly as the day before. I quickly settled back into the rhythm and, once I was comfortable with it, spoke up. I had a source of information on my target, it was about time to learn more about them.

"Tell me about the pirates."

"Wha- Oh!" I had to correct the speeder after her aborted flinch. "Sorry. I, uh. They attacked a few days ago, I- I'm not really sure how many."

Her knuckles turned white.

"I was working one of the fields with my parents when Miss Rania sounded the alarm. We tried to run, but they had speeders. It, we never had a chance."

"They caught up in seconds and cut us off from town. Then, then _that bastard_ walked up and murdered my father." Mara shook her head. "I blacked out then. The next thing I remember is waking up next to my mother back in their camp."

"She." Mara shivered. Her voice was thin. Weak. "She didn't last very long."

She fell silent.

I pretended not to notice the salty water dripping onto my neck.

(*)(*)(*)

It took nearly an hour for Mara to cry herself out. I spent the time alternating between looking for her captors' path to backtrack, and kicking myself for being an insensitive idiot.

Eventually, though, the sniffles faded, and an uncomfortable silence reigned.

The resilience of children was as astonishing as always. Before long, I could feel curiousity, hesitation, and even embarrassment begin to grow in her, pushing aside the grief and pain, if only for a time. Something had caught her interest, but she was too afraid and embarrassed to bring it up.

After my earlier blunder, there was really only one response I could give.

"Ask," I said.

"Wh-What? Ask what?"

I turned enough to give her a sidelong look. She blushed.

"Right." she said after another moment of indecision. "This is really Mandalorian armor, right?"

"Yes."

"But Mandalorians are supposed to be eight feet tall unstoppable super-soldiers that spit fire!" She paused for a moment then hurried to continue. "Not that you don't kick all kinds of ass or anything! It's just... but-"

"But I'm not exactly what you pictured," I finished for her.

She nodded.

"I am Mandalorian," I said, gently but firmly. "Mandalorians are not a race or species. We come in all shapes and sizes. We are a _people_, united not by blood but purpose.

A Mandalorian found me when I was young. A foundling it's called, a child separated from their family by loss or circumstance and entrusted to our care. He took me in and raised me as his own, trained me in the ways of the _Mando'ade_."

A fond smile touched my lips.

"When I came of age, I swore an oath. The same oath sworn by every Mandalorian. To act with honor and dignity. To fight with valor and discipline. To stand unflinching against all who would threaten me and mine. To follow the Creed of Mandalore." Heat and conviction filled my voice, and I barely noticed. "I swore my oath and donned this armor, and I became something _more_. Whatever I was before, whatever I may become in the future, _I am Mandalorian_."

As I finished, I realized she was staring at me. I could feel her gaze boring into the back of my skull.

I did my best not to squirm.

"That sounds... nice," she said at last, quietly enough that I doubted I was meant to hear it.

My helmet hid my own blush.

(*)(*)(*)

"Huh."

The word slipped out before I could stop it as I stared up at the duracrete wall slicing through the forest. The top of the wall stopped just short of the first branches, three meters of so off the ground. It fit through the trees as if it had simply grown up between them, slicing a straight line a dozen meters long. On either side of it, another, identical wall shot off at an angle, repeating again until it wrapped around the compound in a hexagonal shape.

I could make out the top of a building just barely rising above the wall, meshing with the trees also growing inside the walls. To the side, a small gatehouse was just barely visible from here. A small fleet of speeders, including another modified sled, was parked just outside it, ready for their next raid.

I had to admit, these pirates were better funded than I'd expected.

"Alright," Mara said from above me. Her voice was tight with tension and determination. Her knuckles were white against the trunk of the tree we hid behind. "What's the plan?"

"We wait." As I spoke, I was already cycling through vision modes and scanning the exterior of the compound. A group determined enough to build a full compound this far out in the woods, especially one led by a Death Trooper, couldn't possibly fail to have guards posted.

"Wait?!" Mara hissed. "They're right there!"

"Yes." A trio of pirates carrying repeaters, all in the same quasi-uniform of yesterday's group, chose that moment to round the rear of the compound. I started a timer. "They are."

Frustration radiated from her in tangible waves.

"We can't just stand here! We should-" She cut herself off as she finally caught sight of the patrol. I felt the rage spike through her. Her gun twitched. I snagged the barrel before it could really move.

She glared down at me.

I shook my head and pushed the gun down further. Her glare intensified, but I was unmoved. After a long beat, she relented. We both watched the patrol in tense silence.

"Patience," I said as they vanished into the trees on the other side. "_Discipline_. We do not move before we are ready."

"Oh I'm ready alright." Her furious gaze never moved from the trees the patrol had vanished into. "They'll-"

A stray sound pricked against my attention then and I tuned out the rest of her grumbling. It was a low, buzzing hum, faint but growing stronger. I recognized the sound, I knew I'd heard it before, but what it came from I couldn't say.

A moment later, it clicked.

With a muttered oath, I threw myself up at Mara and pushed her back into the tree. She made a strangled sound of surprise before I managed to perch myself on her chest and slap a hand over her mouth. She tried to speak and I squeezed, forcing her lips shut.

"Quiet," I hissed, as forcefully as I dared. "Don't move."

She froze staring at me, eyes wide in surprise and fear.

I did my best to ignore it. I lowered myself against her as tightly as I could manage, wrapping my legs around her waist and all but hugging her.

The hand not holding her mouth shut tapped a series of buttons on my vambrace and I gave a silent prayer. The indicator for my armor's rudimentary stealth systems flashed green.

The systems were not complicated, little more than a way to diffuse my life signs over a larger area. It was meant to make me appear to hostile sensors as a sensor ghost, or maybe even a cluster of small animals. Even then, though, it was rarely able to fool anything smarter than the most rudimentary droid brain.

Fortunately, that was all I needed it to do.

Bare seconds after my stealth systems had engaged, an old Imperial probe droid floated out of the trees directly behind me. The hum of its repulsor was finally loud enough for even Mara to hear. Confusion cut through her emotions and her gaze flicked over my shoulder.

The blood drained from her face.

We stood there frozen for a second that stretched into eternity. The droid swept passed us without even slowing down.

I waited for a ten count, then finally let out the breath I'd been holding and dropped off of Mara, my armor dropping the stealth field as I went. She let out a shaky breath of her own, and slid down the tree.

"R-right," she said a moment later. "Let's get ready."

I didn't bother to fight my smirk.

Together, we circled around the compound, noting potential ingress and egress points and observing the patrols. I never managed to catch a glimpse of the Death Trooper, but between the patrols and what I could feel inside, I thought I had a good read on their total number. Soon enough, a plan started to come together.

"Okay," I said once I'd worked out the last few steps. Mara's attention snapped to me with an almost audible sound. "Here's the plan. After the next pass of the probe, I'm going to use the trees to get into the camp and get into position. You stay here and wait for the signal. Your job will be to take them out while they're distracted. Use the trees to get an angle into the camp. Understand?"

She nodded and tried not to show her nerves.

"Good. Now stand still, the droid's almost here."

I hopped up and latched onto her once more, activating my suit in the process. The droid slid past us without a fuss, and I dropped to the ground. She scowled at me and muttered unpleasantries under her breath that I ignored.

"Remember, short bursts, don't spoil the shot. Aim, pull the trigger, get to cover, _then_ worry if you hit."

"I remember."

I nodded and wished her luck. "_Jate'kara_."

With that, I scampered up the side of the tree and out onto the limbs. It was a fairly simple matter to move through the canopy. The branches were thick and sturdy well away from the trunks and the foliage never really thinned. Which, unfortunately, also meant getting through without making undue noise and giving the game away was slower than I'd have preferred.

I made it to the first tree inside the wall eventually, though, and chanced a glance out of the canopy. It was a fairly simple thing, consisting of three prefab buildings around a large central fire pit.

The centermost building, the one I glimpsed over the wall originally, was a large dome. I could feel a handful of presences within, their emotions raucous and turbulent, reaching fever pitch in time with the game of huttball I could hear.

To the left of that, and closest to my position was a generic office, little more than a large box with a couple of windows. An antenna rose out of some machinery sticking out from behind it and disappeared into the canopy overhead.

The last building, nearly directly across the compound, was a large shed that, from what little I could see through its open door, had to be the pirates' barracks. To my mild surprise, I couldn't feel any presences inside it, sleeping the day away. It was rare to see a pirate band where none of them were napping.

Off to one side, all the way back against the wall, stood a small lean-to, a familiar metal spike driven into the ground underneath it. There was no chain attached to this one, but a dull red stain on the ground told me all I really needed to know.

A trio of pirates lounged around the unlit fire pit, chatting as they sat in the small circle of daylight allowed through the canopy. They were relaxed, clearly not on duty, but just as clearly tense. Their weapons never strayed far from their hands, and their attention drifted to the gate and its single guard every few moments.

Perfect.

I waited for a long minute, and right on time, the last patrol came stomping through the gate. The trio's attention snapped over to their returning comrades, and I used the opportunity to drop silently down the trunk.

The moment I hit the ground, I took off running, dashing across the short distance to the office. From there, it became obvious the machinery with the antenna was a comm system, but one of significantly more power than I'd expected at first glance. The specific make was unfamiliar to me, but the signal array and hyperspace link were obvious. The system could broadcast halfway across the Rim without breaking a sweat. It _had_ to be expensive.

Which made it a perfect target, I thought.

I grabbed one of the three det charges off my belt, keyed it for remote detonation, and slapped it onto the base of the antenna. It lit up in a dim, steady red glow, signaling its readiness and I moved on.

It was the work of only a few careful moments to get behind the center building, where I began to feel for the presences inside. The returning patrol had settled in already and were cheering and/or jeering at the game right alongside their comrades. I felt along the back wall of the building to the point closest to all of them and placed my last two det charges.

Job done, I continued along to the other edge of the barracks, where I could look back over the rest of the compound.. The gate guard was still in position, and still the only one in sight with their blaster drawn and ready to fire.

He was going to be first.

My resolve set, I drew my blaster and pushed into motion, one finger hovering over the detonator. I made it all of three steps.

Maybe I made some noise, or stepped on something I didn't notice, but something gave me away. The gate guard abruptly turned toward me, paled, and began to shout. Answering shouts rang out almost immediately from the group in the middle, then the large building, and finally a shrill mechanical wail filled the air. I pushed the detonator almost on instinct.

The explosions were deafening.

Shouts of warning turned to fear and pain. The three at the campfire whirled back toward the building, but the gate guard stayed focused on me. His rifle swung around. My blaster kicked and his body spun to the ground with a scream.

The three turned back, fear and shock giving way to anger as they spotted me charging toward them. All three had their blasters drawn now, and brought them to bear on me. I fired again, and one of them stumbled back with a yelp, his blaster and the last knuckle of one of his fingers falling to the forest floor.

I cursed and started to dodge, dancing through the fire of the other two pirates. Blaster bolts stitched through the air centimeters from my _beskar_ even as I returned fire, catching one of them in the chest. He collapsed without a sound, moments before I closed the remaining distance to his partner.

She drew a large knife with a curse and swung at me, missing my neck by a hair.

Drawing on my powers, I slammed to a halt and grabbed her wrist before she could retract it. With a moment of focus, I threw myself up and spun, as a wave of force knocked her legs out from under her. She was pulled along with my spin, flipping through the air and slamming into the ground head first.

A wet snap sounded.

I landed neatly beside her corpse, only for my senses to scream in warning. Without a second thought, I threw myself to the side.

The third pirate, still half a finger short, barrelled through where I'd been a moment before. Obscenities rolled from his lips as he spun around looking for me. Behind me, I could feel the pirates from the buildings just starting to emerge, bloodlust and violence fresh on their minds, and I saw an opportunity.

The pirate in the middle finally found me again and lunged.

I threw myself around him, dodging his fingertips by centimeters. A thought and gesture bounced me off thin air, reversed my momentum and sent me barrelling at him from behind. I pushed off the ground with one hand and rolled between his legs before he could react, only to land directly in front of him, facing the building and the collection of other pirates just starting to peek out of it.

My right hand swung up.

The pirate above me hesitated, jaw slack with surprise. My hand tightened into a fist

Fire burst from my vambrace in a searing column. It washed over his chest and face in a wave. He began to scream and thrash, staggering backwards. The other pirates recoiled, shocked at the sudden brutality.

A burning, still-screaming corpse fell to the ground behind me.

Stillness reigned for a single, eternal heartbeat.

"Kriffing shoot it!" A stentorian roar destroyed the moment of peace, and any chance the pirates would break.

I followed the sound to find the Death Trooper glaring out of a window, rifle raised and already firing. The other pirates as one shook off their momentary stupor and hurried to catch up.

In the fraction of a second I had, my blaster flicked out and caught a devaronian in the shoulder. He staggered, but caught himself and started firing nearly as soon as the others.

Then I had no more time to think. The world spun and danced along with me, shifting my steps to pass among the blaster bolts without ever quite touching them. Each step brought me closer and closer to the building, and the cover within.

I made it all of a meter before a sudden burst of realization splashed against my senses.

"Jedi!" The Death Troopers' bellow was unmistakable, even over the blaster fire. "Jonz, C, blind fire!"

I had just enough time to process the words when the universe shrieked in warning. My feet moved without my input, turning an easy hop into a sudden stumble moments before a blaster bolt slammed into the ground beside me.

My rhythm ruined, sparks flew off my chest plate as another bolt hit me. The impact nearly spun me around. I turned into the motion, letting it flow into a somersault and then back into motion.

More blaster fire rained down all around me, a decent chunk of which clearly wasn't even aimed at me, if it was aimed at all, and it was all the more effective for it. I was forced to constantly scramble at the last instant to dodge fire that _no one_ could predict.

Sparks began to fly off me more and more often as I failed to keep up. Each hit shook my concentration and my confidence, making it all the more difficult to dodge the next.

My advance stalled, then became a retreat.

Under a withering hail of fire, I fled, darting into cover behind the office building, and nearly collapsed. My breath came in pants. My heart thundered in my ears.

That had not been pleasant.

I didn't have long to rest. Already, the Trooper was barking orders at his men, rallying them to flush me out. I could feel their rage and excitement rising. They could taste blood in the water. It wouldn't be long before they came after me again.

With a grunt of effort, I crept to the edge of the building and peeked out, ready to duck back at any moment.

The Trooper had arranged his pirates in three three-man kill teams, each one with the lead element holding a physical shield, ranging from a table on its side to a bit of door, while the other two aimed over his shoulder. Overlapping fields of fire was the name of the game. If I stepped out, all three groups would have a free shot on me.

The Trooper himself, however, was separate, he and the devaronian I'd shot earlier formed a fourth team. They didn't have a shield, but they did have the burning bottle the devaronian had just thrown over the building.

My eyes went wide but before I could react, the Trooper casually shot it out of the air. The bottle exploded, sending a rain of glass and burning liquid raining behind the office. _On me_.

With an effort of will, I threw up an umbrella of force. The glass and flame slid off it and into the loam around me, where leaves and other detritus almost immediately began to burn. Neither Mara nor I would survive a proper forest fire, so I had to spend precious seconds strangling the flames before it could get any bigger.

Which meant I didn't notice the thermal detonator until it landed.

I cursed and threw myself away from it as far and fast as I could, but the shockwave caught me regardless, sending me tumbling out and into the open. The Trooper barked something I couldn't make out over the ringing in my ears, and blaster fire rang out. Rapid short bursts that I heard but didn't feel.

Then sense reasserted itself.

I shot to my feet and spun toward the pirates, already starting to move. One of the kill teams was dead, bodies slumped over the table they'd brought out as cover, while the other two had whirled toward the compound's wall.

_Mara_, I realized with a grin.

The Trooper had seen me rise, and I could see on his face he knew what it meant. I reached for my blaster, but it wasn't there. With a curse, I charged at him, dodging the few shots he managed to get off at me before I was in range.

My grapple shot out and caught him across the chest, wrapping around his upper arms and pulling them flush. He let go of his rifle with one hand and grabbed the grapple line, then _pulled_. The move yanked me off my feet and sent me flying through the air, right at the devaronian.

I grinned.

With a flex of my left hand, my flock of whistling birds, the self-guiding rocket darts installed in my vambrace came to life. With their eponymous shriek, three of the darts launched from my arm and in an instant tore into the devaronian's right eye.

I landed moments before his corpse.

The second I hit the ground, I threw myself back toward the Death Trooper, who was just beginning to turn around. His arms were still trapped by my grapple, his gun at an angle and unable to be brought to bear. I threw myself at the back of his knee, bringing him down with an oath.

I turned through the motion, swinging around and climbing up his armor before he could react. With my feet on his shoulder and one hand around his chin, I grabbed and pulled with everything I had.

His neck snapped with a pop.

Silence fell over the compound once again. The five surviving pirates stared at me with wide eyes.

Another burst of fire from the trees reduced their number to four.

They ran for the gate.

None of them made it.

(*)(*)(*)

"Good work," I told Mara as she walked through the gate. I gingerly got back to my feet and gave her a once-over. There were no obvious injuries, but her hands were scraped up pretty well, presumably from climbing the trees. "And thank you."

"Anytime." She flashed me a satisfied grin.

I grunted and started walking back into the compound. She fell into step with me, but where I walked around the corpses, she went out of her way to walk over them.

I wasn't sure that was exactly healthy, but she had more than enough reason for it.

"So what're we doing still here?" she asked a minute later.

"Looking for information," I said. I led her into the office building. The interior was ruined, with an enormous hole in the back, and a layer of dust covered everything. The desk, and the datapads on top of it, were still intact however.

"These pirates were unusually well-funded. They may have a backer."

Mara frowned. "You mean it's not over?"

"Can't say." I turned on the datapads and started skimming through the contents. The death trooper kept surprisingly detailed paperwork for a pirate, though, and it didn't take me long to find his balance sheets. Mara waited impatiently.

Half a minute later, I had to put it down and suppress the urge to go mutilate his corpse.

"It's over," I said instead. Mara's attention latched on to me like a physical weight. "This band was selling slaves to the Remnant. Probably where you were headed."

And judging by the numbers in this ledger, a few of those slaves were even Force sensitives, something the Remnant had always paid a premium for. Gods help the poor bastards.

She deflated, her relief nearly palpable.

"So there won't be any more?"

"There's always more pirates," I said. "But none related to this group."

She grumbled something half-heartedly while I grabbed the other datapad and flipped through it. It was similar minutiae as the first, but a file toward the end caught my attention. It was a holo, recently recorded, and the only one on the datapad. Curiousity stoked, I set the pad down and started the playback.

The holo had to be from an armor-cam, and whoever was recording, the trooper I assumed, was riding a speeder across familiar fields of grass, Mara's town in the distance. Closer, a trio of figures could be seen pushing through the grass, running flat out toward the town.

The recording didn't have sound, but I didn't need it to know the trooper was laughing.

He and another pirate on a speeder corralled the fleeing figures, darting ahead to cut them off from town and herd them away, only to fall back and begin the chase again. One of the figures fell, and I could hear Mara's sharp breath.

The trooper swooped past the trio and slid to a stop, dismounted, and walked back to loom over them. A holographic double of Mara cowered behind what had to be her parents. They said something to the trooper, I couldn't tell what. Whatever the trooper's response, it drove Mara's father to throw himself at the trooper with a roar.

He died before he managed his second step.

Mara and her mother both screamed. The trooper walked up and kicked the body.

Mara's face twisted into a rictus of hate. One hand snapped out and the trooper rocketed back like he'd been fired out of a canon. The recording dissolved into chaos for a couple of seconds, before the trooper was back on his feet and charging back at them. The other pirate, still on his speeder, shot a stun bolt into her Mara's back, and she collapsed, twitching and insensate.

The recording ended, her mother clutching her limp body and crying.

"That answers several questions," I said into the ensuing, brittle silence.

Mara didn't respond.

I looked over. She was still staring at the holo, her gaze locked on her dead family. I turned it off with a quiet sigh.

"C'mon." I prodded her hip, the highest point I could reach. "Let's get you home."

"R- right." She let me lead her back out of the camp and back to the speeder.

She was silent all the way back to town.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

The sun was just beginning to set as we emerged from the trees, shadows of deepening twilight contrasting sharply with the orange of the grass. Wind blew in steady bursts across the field, setting the grass to dancing. We surged into the field, speeding toward the town in the distance, and I was abruptly struck by the scene. The glittering, shifting mass of orange and purple made it seem like the entire field was aflame.

Mara hissed out a quiet breath and simultaneously relaxed and tensed. Grief and pain smashed against stubborn will. I released one of the handlebars and squeezed the back of her hand.

The tension ebbed, ever so slightly.

I tried not to smile as I turned my attention back to driving. The fields sped past in a comfortable silence. The distant silhouette of the town loomed ever larger in the distance, growing rapidly as we closed. The whole way in I could feel the nervous tension and fear still hovering over it.

Which made it easy to tell when they spotted us.

A sudden spike of alarm and terror cut through the tension like a knife. Distant shouts reached my ears, followed moments later by a klaxon that even Mara could hear. Adrenaline and fear shot through her, only to bleed away almost immediately. She made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob, even as I released the throttle.

We coasted in on our momentum, slower with every moment, with my hands firmly in the air. And after a suggestion, Mara's as well. We drifted in like that for several long seconds, surprise and confusion welling up until a sudden spike of recognition battered against my senses.

"Mara!" A man shouted, shock and relief clear in his tone. Other voices took up the call, questioning at first, but more and more of them recognized her.

"That's her," I shouted back. "The job is done. You have nothing to fear from those pirates."

The words sent an electric current through the crowd. Raucous cheers and laughter began to spread. Suddenly there was a stampede. Weapons fell to the ground unheeded as a dozen people surged out toward us

Mara froze, staring at the crowd with wide, shocked eyes.

"It's really you!" I recognized Jann Rania's voice this time as she pushed through the crowd. She stepped up and swept Mara into a hug, nearly pulling her off the speeder in the process. "Thank the stars you're alive!"

Mara made a strangled sound, but soon melted into the hug. Her shoulders shook with the raw emotion tearing through her. They stayed like that for a long moment, the others crowding around and adding their own cheers and welcomes, before they separated.

"Come, let's get you cleaned up." she said, and helped Mara off the speeder. Jann then barked a quick set of orders to the other villagers to prepare a celebration. Once they were gone, she turned to me. "And thank you, Mando. I thought we'd never see her again. You must stay, and join the celebration."

"Not necessary. You hired me. I did the job." She frowned. I shook my head. "But we must speak regardless. If you wish to repay whatever obligation you feel, then once she's had a chance to clean up and get some new clothes, both of you come find me. Privately."

Her frown intensified, even as Mara sent me a questioning glance. I returned Jann's look with a stare of my own.

She blinked first.

"As you wish."

She turned and led Mara back into town. Just before they rounded the corner, Mara sent a glance back at me, the relief and release on her face belied by a deep-seated grief I could feel lurking beneath it. I waved in what I hoped was an encouraging way, and they both vanished.

The nervous fear that hung over the hamlett was already lifting, the sudden spikes of surprise and joy as the news spread driving it further and further away. I decided to stay out of the way, guiding my speeder off the main drag not too far from the bar, where I settled in to wait.

Excited villagers passed by every couple of minutes, as word of the pirates' fate, Mara's return, and especially the rapidly forming party spread. Some of them even spotted me. I accepted their gratitude with as much poise as I could manage, and deflected the handful of small rewards they tried to offer. The excitement of the place was infectious, a stark contrast to yesterday, and I couldn't help but get swept up in it a little.

Before too long though, Jann and Mara found me. Mara had been cleaned within an inch of her life, her skin flushed and shining from the treatment, while her hair fell in neat waves to her shoulder blades. She'd been bundled in a new set of clothes as well, the rags I'd found her in replaced with a dark shirt and red pants.

I hopped off my speeder and nodded a greeting at them.

"What did you need to say?" Jann asked. "Was there something about the pirates we should know?"

"No. It's about Mara." Jann's brow furrowed.

"The recording?" Mara asked. Grief and rage spiked as she remembered it, but she pushed it down.

I nodded.

"What recording?" Jann asked. Her gaze bounced from Mara to me and back.

"One of the pirates had an armor-cam. They recorded Mara's capture." Jann's eyes went wide in surprise, even as outrage surged through her. She opened her mouth, but I held up a hand. Instead of speaking, she pulled Mara into a hug.

Mara squirmed uncomfortably as I plowed ahead.

"In that recording, Mara demonstrated an extremely rare talent." Jann and Mara both stared at me. I looked directly at the girl. "You, Mara, are Force-sensitive."

Mara blinked.

"Force-sensitive? You mean like the Jedi?" she asked. Her brow furrowed.

"Not just the Jedi." I focused for a moment and lifted one hand. The big cobblestone at my feet, one of the markers delineating the edge of the road, lifted into the air and began to hover above my head. Their eyes remained glued to it as it lazily spun at eye level, with nothing visibly holding it up.

"I am a Force-sensitive myself, it's one of the reasons I was able to rescue you as I did."

"That..." Mara trailed off, still staring at the rock. She shook her head and locked her gaze on me. "I could move like that? Do this?!"

"With training, yes."

"Why are you telling us this?" Jann cut in, her voice even sharper than her frown.

"The talent is rare, and the opportunity rarer." I shrugged and looked between them, then focused on Mara. "I suggest you contact the Republic, the local Senator can put you in touch with the Jedi. Or I could send them a message after I leave tomorrow morning. They should be able to train you, if you wish it."

Mara glanced between the cobblestone now gently depositing itself back on the ground and me. She glanced over at Jann. The older woman exhaled.

"We can discuss it later," she said with a shake of her head. She sent me a cautious look. "Unless there's anything more to discuss..." I shook my head once she trailed off. "Then we should go. I believe there's a celebration waiting for us."

I had just enough time to squawk in surprise when Mara bodily picked me up and began to walk off.

"Stop squirming, you don't have to eat or anything, but you're still coming to the party," she said.

I didn't struggle very hard.

(*)(*)(*)

The next morning found me in the large dirt field that served as the village's starport, hauling my gear and supplies into the _Razor Crest_. The _Crest_ was an old patrol boat, built at the height of the Clone Wars, that had passed on to my father, and then to me. It had been a labor of love keeping it in top shape, and I wouldn't trade it for anything.

The work of loading to leave was quick and familiar, though complicated slightly by the basket of fruits I hadn't been able to dissuade one of the villagers from pressing on me last night. I took what little solace I could in that he hadn't found the credstick I'd slipped into his pocket afterward.

I had just finished getting that stashed away and begun to load my speeder when I sensed a familiar presence approaching.

I turned around and nodded a greeting at Mara. She returned it with a wave, her run ending a couple of meters away. She hunched over her knees and let the sack over one shoulder drop to the ground.

"Good," she panted. "You're still here."

"Not for much longer," I said. "Did you want something?"

"Yes. I-" She stopped herself and straightened up, forcing her breathing back under control in the process. Nervousness and hope in equal measure roiled inside her as she tried to look me in the eye. Hesitation won for a long moment.

Then she bowed and the words came rushing out.

"Take me with you!"

I blinked.

"What?"

"Please!" Her bow deepened, even as her nerves intensified. "Take me with you. I want to be a, a foundling."

I stared at her for several seconds, feeling her nervousness grow with every passing moment, but hope and stubborn determination kept it from showing on her face. Such seriousness deserved serious consideration in turn. I climbed off my speeder and moved directly in front of her.

"Do you know what you are asking for?" I looked up and met her gaze.

"Not really," she admitted easily. "But I want to learn."

"You would have to leave." I gestured back at the town. "You have a home here. Jann cares about you. Why are you so eager to throw it away?"

She shook her head, powerful grief surging through her.

"This- this isn't home. Not anymore." Her shoulders quivered. The dirt beneath her feet seemed to seize her interest. "I can't stay. I look around and all I can see are reminders, repeats of that moment.

"I talked to Miss Rania about it, after the party." She looked up. Tears were welling in the corner of her eyes. "She didn't like it, but she understood. I think."

"You don't have to become a foundling to leave," I told her. "So again, why?"

"Because I can't go through that again!" Her sudden shout rang in my ears like a bell. "I- I watched my parents be murdered and _I couldn't do a gods damned thing_!

"I've seen what you can do! You tore those pirates apart! I want that! I want to _be_ that!" I stared at her in silence. She slumped, the raw emotion draining out of her. She shook her head. Her voice was quiet, even tired, but far from defeated. "And I'm going to learn. But I need your help to do it.

"_Please_."

Good enough.

I stepped back with a nod, lifting her bag with a gesture and holding it beside her.

"Get in," I told her. "We leave in ten."

Her grin was blinding.

(*)(*)(*)

"This is it," I said two days later. The shimmering blue of hyperspace melted into the familiar void. Stars glimmered in every color of the rainbow,a corruscating patten broken only by the enormous emerald sphere dominating the view.

Mara, in the cockpit seat behind me, looked up from the datapad she'd been studying fervently since we left. It was full of information about the history and culture of the Mandalorians, the clans, their symbology, and all the rest. Given the constraints of travel, it was the best way I could introduce her to the new life she'd chosen.

"That's Dantooine?" she asked, wonder and excitement in her voice. "It's... beautiful."

I hummed my agreement.

Mara stayed glued to the window as I set about preparing the ship for landing. Every moment the planet loomed ever-larger, and the stars grew dimmer. In only a few minutes, they had faded entirely, replaced by a sheet of brilliant blue.

Below us, the grasslands stretched to the horizon in all directions, an endless sea of green and yellow, broken only by the small but rapidly closing cluster of buildings ahead. Mara watched it pass with rapt attention, all the way to the spaceport.

The moment the _Crest_ had settled, she was out the cockpit door and hallway down the ladder to the hold.

I followed at a more sedate pace, though as was my custom, I jumped down and skipped the ladder entirely. She was waiting by the hatch, nearly vibrating in place, while I collected my weapons and made to join her.

The hatch slid open with the push of a button and we stepped out into the fresh air of Dantooine.

"This way," I said, and began to walk. Mara fell into step with me.

We emerged from the spaceport on one end of a large, open park, an echo of the fields that surrounded the city. Most of the park was surrounded by a collection of flattened pyramids, few of which were taller than a single story, in the hallmark style of the native humans.

A steady stream of the natives wandered through and around the buildings, and more than a few were lounging around in the park itself. Mara stared at it all in mute surprise, only to jump with a yelp when I poked her leg.

I gestured for her to follow and headed for the one segment of the park not backed by pyramids. She complied with a muttered apology.

As we walked, the natives we passed would frequently smile or wave, and I'd return it with a nod. Sometimes, they'd even stop us briefly to wish me well or welcome me back. Each time, Mara sent me an increasingly curious look until finally she couldn't restrain herself any longer.

"What's that about?" she asked after the sixth time. "Do you know her?"

"No," I said with a shake of my head. "You've read the history. You tell me."

"You mean Mandalore the Ascendant? All that because you're a Mandalorian?" She looked at me with wide eyes. "But it's been almost two hundred years!"

"Their ancestors were slaves when he came," I reminded her. "They still would be if he hadn't gathered the clans and driven off the Imperial Remnant. Debts of honor like that aren't easy to forget."

"I guess that makes sense," Mara said. "That explains why they gave him the land for the enclave too."

"It wasn't given," I corrected her. "It was bought in blood and honor. A price we have paid more than once."

"Right," she nodded with a brief grimace. *Sorry."

"Don't be. You are learning." I gestured for her to keep walking. "Come. We are close."

A comfortable silence fell as we continued, all the way out of the park and onto the roadway bordering it. Directly in front of us, ten meters of durasteel rose out of the ground for nearly a kilometer in both directions. Beskar inlays of sharp lines and whorling shapes glittered along the top of the wall, one every few dozen meters. Directly overhead, three jagged parallel lines, wide enough to blend together at the base, shone in brilliant silver.

Mara paused when she saw it.

"Those are clan signets," she said. "Vizla, Ordo..."

"Yes." I didn't even try to disguise the smile in my voice. "This way."

I led her along the wall, noting with no small amount of satisfaction the way she locked onto each signet as we passed underneath it. She didn't recognize all of them, or even most, but her interest was keen.

Then we reached the entrance.

Another signet stood proudly overhead, larger than all the others. It was a side-on view of a triangular skull, with large eye holes and a deep mouth. A massive horn stretched out from the point of its nose back toward its neck. It was the signet of Clan Djarin, and an exact copy of the symbol on my own pauldron.

Below it, the gates stood closed. The enormous slabs of durasteel were seven meters tall and almost half that thick. I knew from experience they each weighed several ton, just as I knew they were balanced well enough I could push them open even without my powers.

I'd helped install them, after all.

To either side of the gate, a pair Mandalorians, their armor gleaming blue and gold, stood silent vigil, distinctive two-pronged amban rifles held at rest. The moment they spotted me, they snapped to attention.

"Welcome back," the one on the right said. His partner banged a fist on the gate behind him. With an audible clunk, the gates unlocked and silently slid open.

"_Yaim'ol_." I saluted the pair and led Mara into the enclave proper.

We emerged at the end of a long open space. We stood on a wide stone path, worn with age and traffic, but sturdy and well-maintained. On either side, rich, smooth marble extended out a dozen meters to durasteel walls. The outer layer of beskar shone with a mirror shine, reflecting the sunlight filtering through the transparisteel ceiling.

Down the length of the hall, small plinths stood in neat, angled rows. Atop them was a chaotic mishmash of random items, ranging from animal skulls to shattered armor to broken weapons. There was even the front armor of an Imperial AT-ST, suspended in a repulsor field at the end of the hall.

"What, what _is_ this place?" Mara asked. She'd followed me in and was taking it all in with wonder.

"The trophy hall," I said. I gestured around me. "These are spoils, taken with honor from powerful foes. Reminders of past victories, put here so that none who enter can forget what we've faced, and defeated. It is among the highest of honors for a Mandalorian to earn the right to place a trophy here."

I walked over to a nearby plinth and gestured at the broken vibrosword floating above it.

"This belonged to Dath Onarr, a self-styled pirate king. He conquered a dozen worlds in the wake of the Empire's collapse, and held them against the Republic for over a decade." I touched the plaque at the base of the plinth. A life-size holo of a Mandalorian in white and purple armor flickered to life. "Redan Ordo cut him down in the heart of his palace, freed his slaves, and reduced his kingdom to ashes."

I walked to the next row over, this plinth holding a fanged skull. It was an enormous thing, almost twice my height alone, with a fan of bone rising from its base like a sail. A ridge of vicious spines ran along this crest, their points sharp and gleaming even when over a century old. The shortest of its fangs were longer than my arms. When I pressed the plaque, a Mandalorian nautolan, her head-tails hanging out of her helmet in a messy jumble, stood in a sloppy salute. She was short. Her shoulders barely cleared the top of my head, and it made the enormous slab of beskar she called a sword look even bigger.

"And this is the skull of _A'den'ad_. The Spawn of Wrath in Basic. Slain by Miria Kahn less than twenty kilometers from this very spot."

Mara looked from me to the holo, and then up at the skull.

"She killed that thing?"

"She did. Shortly after we settled, the natives began to disappear. For weeks, they'd venture out of town for one reason or another, and never return. It even began to prey on us, ambushing patrols and anyone who ventured too far from the enclave." I smiled fondly at the holo. "Miria refused to allow it to continue. She set out and hunted the culprit down.

"The Remnant had been experimenting on the native wildlife, using Sith magic to turn them into weapons. As a last act of vengeance, when we forced them off, they released their only success. She tracked it to its lair, fought it to a standstill, and carved out its heart."

"She sounds like fun," Mara said with a smile. Her gaze moved to the skull. "This was really made by Sith magic?"

I nodded.

"Most _cathan'dare_ are two thirds that size, and don't have the spikes on their crest. They share the tendency to keep fighting after being cut in half though." I shrugged at her look. "The Remnant picked them for a reason."

She blinked.

"And you live near these things?"

"We are Mandalorian." I laughed and started for the exit at the back of the room, waving for her to follow. "Come. We can stay here all day, and there is more to do."

(*)(*)(*)

Half an hour later, we emerged from the twisting and labyrinthine streets that comprised most of the enclave and out into the main communal space. It was a large field of stone and grass, decorated almost at random with trees, benches, and tables. A large sand pit dominated one side, a small audience around it cheering for the duel being fought within. A group of children, barely more than half of them human, played some kind of ball game on the opposite side, the rules as fluid and meaningless as only a children's game could be.

And in the exact center lay our destination.

It was a large but plain building, absent any sign of the ornamentation so common throughout the rest of the enclave. The only decoration its owner allowed was a simple sigil, the tusked skull of a mythosaur, set into the door. As we approached, a steady clang could be heard, backed by a constant low hiss. It was a steady, repetitive sound, one I knew from experience could be synced perfectly with a metronome.

I tried not to smile as I knocked.

The door was opened in moments by a young human woman in the prime of her youth. She wore most of a set of armor, its plate unadorned and unpainted, but it did little to hide her beauty. Especially since she'd yet to earn her helmet. Long brown hair flowed down her back. Amber eyes glanced at Mara, then me, and she smiled.

"You are back," she said simply. I nodded.

"Rinna. I must speak to your mother."

"Of course. This way." Rinna led us in and down a sloping hallway, until we emerged in a cavernous circular room. Anvils, grindstones, and all manner of other tools I couldn't begin to name lined the walls, in their own way all bent in obsequious reverence to the metal pillar rising from the exact middle of the entire enclave.

It was a deceptively simple thing. There were no decorations or distractions anywhere; to the untrained eye, it was little more than a simple metal slab. If not for the ring of blue flame sprouting from the top or the console extending out of one side, it would be completely unremarkable.

It was the _Naur'beskar_, the Beskar Forge.

And it was nothing to the woman beside it. She was clad head to toe in crimson and gold armor, the finest beskar the clans had ever produced. Her helmet gleamed in the fires of the forge, and the hammer in her hand moved with precise grace. A plate of nearly-finished beskar sat on the anvil before her, slowing growing into its final shape under her hammer's guidance. Each strike sent a resounding clang throughout the building and into the park beyond.

We stood there in silence for almost a minute before Mara's impatience began to outweigh her awe. She moved to speak, but I held up a hand. She frowned at me. I shook my head, willing patience into her.

She sighed under her breath and settled back in to wait.

It was only another minute or so before the hammer was set aside and the beskar left to cool.

"So you have returned," the Forgemaster said. Her voice had a steady, deliberate cant to it, a rhythm as solid and immutable as her hammer. She turned to face me with the same calm poise she'd had since her mother passed the position to her. She bowed slightly to me. "Kuiil of Clan Djarin."

"Forgemaster," I replied, returning her bow. She hummed thoughtfully and glanced from me to Mara and back.

"Is she why you have returned?"

"She is," I said. "I Found her on my last job. Her parents were slain. She is-"

"Right here!" Mara's restraint finally reached its edge. The Forgemaster and I turned to stare at her as one. She blushed and squirmed, but with only an embarrassed cough, rallied. She tried, and only mostly failed, to copy my bow "My name is Mara Jade. It's an honor to meet you."

The Forgemaster continued to stare at her for a long second, and Mara's nerves continued to grow. Until warm laughter began to peal from the Forgemaster's helmet. Mara blinked, straightening up and sending me a curious glance.

I couldn't help but smile.

The Forgemaster turned back to me, approval strong in her voice.

"I can see why you chose her." She turned to Mara. "Well met, Mara Jade."

Mara blushed and bowed again.

"Mara has chosen to become my Foundling," I said into the ensuing silence. "She wishes to become a Mandalorian."

"Does she now?" The Forgemaster examined Mara once more. The girl swallowed, looked up and nodded firmly. "This is good news indeed. This calls for _olar'skraan_!

"Rinna, we have work to do. Fetch my wiring kit." Her daughter acknowledged the order with a salute and left. The Forgemaster turned back to Mara and I. "You two have preparations of your own to complete. I trust you can complete them?"

"Yes," I said. Mara frowned at her, then at me. I continued before she could speak. "I'll explain on the way. Come."

I turned and led Mara back outside. I took a moment to reorient myself and set off in the exact opposite direction than we'd come from.

"So what're we doing now?" Mara asked almost a minute later. "And what's _olar_-whatsit anyway?"

"_Olar'skraan_ is a feast, a celebration held when a youngling chooses to take their first steps on the path of Mandalore," I told her. "And as the guests of honor, it is on us to provide the meal."

"What?" Mara sent me an astonished look. "How are we supposed to do that?"

"We hunt. We set ourselves against the wildest, fiercest beast we can find, and bring back its corpse. We prove our honor and our skill, and in the doing we earn the right to stand at the side of Mandalore. For-"

"There is no value without sacrifice." Mara intoned the words with me. I looked at her. She smiled. "I remember."

"Good." My helmet hid my own smile.

We walked in silence for several minutes until we arrived at a smaller building near the rear of the enclave. Another gate, much smaller than the front, was set into the wall just past it. I led Mara into the building.

"Whoa..." she let out an impressed whistle.

The inside of the building was a single room, and aside from a handful of floor to ceiling pillars, utterly devoid of furniture. It still managed to feel cramped, however, even for me. Every vertical surface of it was covered in a dizzying array of simple weapons. Bows, spears, swords, halberds, knives, nearly any weapon one could fashion from beskar and wood alone had wallspace dedicated to it.

And each and every one was a masterpiece, the absolute pinnacle of the Forgemasters' craft. Entire lifetimes of skill and passion had gone into every single weapon on display. Each one was a work of art, beauty in every curve and fold that was rivaled only by its deadliness.

I grinned and move over to a basket left nearby for just this purpose and began to disarm. My blaster went first, followed by the det packs on my belt, the knife in my boot, and the knife under my breastplate. It wasn't until I unclipped my vambraces and let them fall that Mara spoke up.

"Wait, what are you doing?" Surprise and a bit of nervousness leaked into her. I looked over.

"Ceremonial hunts are done with ceremonial weapons." I nodded at the masterpieces all around us. I walked over and picked up the smallest spear in the building, feeling its weight and balance. With a nod, I slung it into the provided sheathe and slipped it over my shoulder. It was just barely small enough to carry comfortably.

"But I've never even held anything like these before."

I picked up another spear, weighed it and gave Mara a considering look. Satisfied, I sheathed it and tossed it to her.

"I will teach. You will learn. This is the way."


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

"The path of Mandalore is paved with conflict."

Out on the open plain, my voice carried much farther than the girl behind me. It bounced along the top of the shoulder-high grass, carried by the breeze to thin and windswept trees. The dirt under our feet had been tramped clear of grass by countless others making this same journey.

"It is a road made of struggle, of violence. Of sacrifice. You will pit your body, your mind, your _will_ against ever-greater foes, and through that crucible you will forge yourself into something greater."

Behind me, Mara's spear beat a cadence against her back with every step. I'd chosen my pace carefully, forcing her to move just barely too fast to be entirely comfortable. She didn't complain at the pace, nor at the mid-day sun beating down on her.

I turned to look at her without breaking stride.

"There is nothing that embodies this ideal so purely as the hunt. It is a battle of wits, patience, skill, and will. Your abilities pressed against your enemy's with only one victor." I paused for a beat, letting the sound of the wind rustling through the grass fill the silence. "It will push you to your enemy's limits."

"The enemy's limits?" Mara cocked an eyebrow. "Don't you mean _my _limits?"

"No." I gave her a direct look. "You cannot be pressed further than your enemy can go. And your enemy will not stop at yours. You will be pushed exactly as far as your enemy is capable."

Mara frowned.

"That's why there is no honor in a weak opponent?"

"An enemy that can't reach your limits is not an enemy. It is an obstacle." I nodded at her. "It requires no risk, no _sacrifice_, to face them. And without sacrifice-"

"There is no value," Mara finished. She made an agreeable sound. "I understand. What about the other way? If I find an enemy whose limits I can't reach?"

"Then you will die with honor." Mara sucked in a surprised breath. I nodded, lips drawn in a grim line.

"That is why we hunt. That we may hone ourselves and, with luck, never face such a foe." I slowed enough to put a hand on her arm. Her frown faded slightly. "Peace. It is time to begin honing your edge."

At the same time, the dirt under my feet began to soften, heralding our arrival at a small pond. A couple of trees cast swaying shadows across the area, while grass ran right up to the soupy mud that marked the water's edge. With only a cursory glance I could see recent traces from several animals.

"This will do." I lifted a hand, stopping Mara at my side. I turned to her once more. "We are here for a reason. Can you tell me why?"

"Water." There was no hesitation in her answer. "Animals have to drink too, so water is the best way to find them."

I gave her a look. She shrugged and grimaced.

"Dad taught me a bit, before..."

"Good," I said when she trailed off. I waved a hand at the scene before us. "Tell me, what do you see?"

She paused and carefully studied the oasis before answering.

"Two trees, tall grass. Um, that rock over there would be good cover?" She trailed off uncertainly and looked at me. I stared back. She looked away.

"Um... Oh! Tracks!" She pointed at shore, and the footprints that had yet to fade from the mud. When she looked at me, I nodded.

"How many animals?"

"Uh..." She bit her lip and stared back at the water's edge. I waited in silence for almost a minute. Finally, she blew out a heavy breath and sagged. "I'm not sure."

"There is no shame in ignorance," I said. "You will learn. I ask so I know what I must teach."

"Right, okay." Mara shook herself. "So how many animals are there?"

"At least six." With my spear, I pointed at the nearest set, a small cluster of hoof prints. "These are from a small herd of iriaz, the local equivalent of deer. There were at least three of them."

Her brow furrowed.

"How can you tell that?"

"The shape." I took a step forward and turned around. My own footprints were clear and sharp in the mud. I traced the edge of of it with my spear.

"The edges of this are crisp, the lines sharp. Do you see?" Mara squatted down and, after examining the footprints for a long moment, nodded. "That means it is fresh. As time passes, gravity warps the edges, the wind strips it of strength. They soften and fade."

I turned back to the iriaz prints and traced my spear along one.

"The edges of these are curled, blunt. They are a few hours old at least." I pointed to the next. "But they are all in a similar state of decay. None of these are more than an hour apart."

"And they're herd animals, so it must have been a group of them," Mara said. She smiled at me.

I nodded.

"Yes." I pointed to several other prints in turn. "These prints are different sizes. They can't all be from the same animal."

She hummed and nodded.

I moved carefully to the other set of tracks, a couple of thick depressions in the mud right at the water's edge. Mara followed, doing her best to avoid disturbing the other tracks.

"This is from an indaraz, a large, solitary herbivore. They are docile creatures, but can prove deadly when provoked." I gestured at the holes. "These are from its manipulators, small arms below its head it uses to pull leaves off of trees. They were pressed into the mud when it went to drink."

Mara looked from the depressions, either of which was wider than she was, to me.

"How big is this thing supposed to be?"

I pointed at one of the trees a bit further down. Half of it, the half pointing toward the water, has been scraped down to the bark, empty branches hanging twisted and broken, from the base to nearly four meters off the ground.

She blinked.

"That's big."

I grunted an agreement.

"There are other tracks here," I said to bring her back on track. I pointed to the handful of remaining signs of animal life, and spent a moment explaining each one.

Mara absorbed it all with the same attentive focus she'd shown with everything else I'd taught her.

By the time I was done, the sun had reached its zenith and it was time to move on.

"So what now?" Mara asked when I fell silent.

"This is your hunt," I told Mara. I swept a hand around the oasis. "Choose your prey."

She frowned at me.

"Aren't you supposed to do that?"

"This is _your_ hunt," I said. "I am a guide and teacher, nothing more. _You_ must hunt, or the _olar'oya_ has no meaning."

Mara sighed and gave me annoyed look.

I returned it as evenly as I could.

She sighed and turned back to the different tracks, bending down to examine them carefully.

"Well... the iriaz and indaraz, was it?" She glanced at me. I nodded. "The indaraz are the freshest tracks. I think."

I made an agreeable noise. She took it as an encouraging sign.

"So those would be the easiest to catch up to, so I'd want to go after one of them." She glanced between the two sets of tracks, then back to me. I nodded again. After a moment's hesitation, she continued. "How would I take down either of them?"

"The iriaz are skittish, you would have to sneak up on one and separate it from its herd. It will try to run. You must chase it, pursue until its stamina has been exhausted and end it. It will be long and tiring, and a worthy beast for your first hunt.

"Indaraz are different beasts. Their size makes them docile, they will not flee your approach, but that is not without good reason. They are large and when roused, can be quite fierce." I paused for a moment and gave her a considering look. "Their leg joints are weak, however, and your spear would allow you to bleed it from a distance. It will be difficult, but should be within your means, and it will reward you with meat enough for the whole of _olar'skraan_."

Mara took in my words with her usual steady focus and stood in quiet thought for several seconds.

"We're going for the indaraz," she said at last. She gave me a challenging stare, daring me to contradict her.

I gestured for her to lead the way. She had the attitude of a Mandalorian, if nothing else.

She nodded at me and glanced around. I could almost feel her attention as it moved from the holes near the water to the enormous footprints and then over to the stripped tree. She knelt down and examined the footprints carefully, then stood up with another nod.

"This way." She led me, correctly, past the tree and back out into the grasslands. It didn't take long before we were forced to slow, however.

The indaraz's trail was harder to follow here, captured in broken blades of grass and tough earth, rather than mud. More than once, we were forced to backtrack and pick up the trail anew.

Each time, once we'd returned to the tracks, I stepped in and explained what she'd missed, showed her how to look. She was as attentive as always, patiently absorbing the lessons and trying to put them to immediate use. It didn't always work, but the effort was genuine and she improved dramatically over the course of the next couple of hours.

Which is when the plains gave way to stone.

Enormous rocks, worn flat by wind and rain, slid a few centimeters out of the ground in the middle of the grasslands, forming a long plateau of open ground. The grass grew out between them in winding rivers of grain, the largest of which was nearly four meters across. All the way off to one side of it, a large, rocky bluff rose out of the grass, likely the original source for most of the stone.

Mara paused at the edge of stone and frowned. She followed the trail of the indaraz and stepped up onto the nearest piece of stone. She began to turn around and examine the stone carefully, trying to divine any sign of the beast.

I joined her and cast my own eye around. There was no trace of the indaraz that I could see nearby, though some of the grass a few rocks over suggested it might have passed that way. I was confident she wasn't going to find the trail again any time soon. I debated with myself the best way to handle it, but the decision was not a difficult one. By the time she'd straightened up, a defeated frown already on her lips, I had a plan.

"Peace," I said. One foot tapped against the rock. "The terrain is working against you. There's little here to leave a trail in. It's not a failure to lose track of it."

"I guess. It's just..." Mara's scowl said more than words could. "I don't want to lose it."

"You won't." I approached her, opening myself to the universe in the same motion. "For you are not limited to the physical trail."

She blinked, confusion writ large on her face, until surprise, recognition, and anticipation replaced it.

"You mean..."

I nodded.

"You are more than simple flesh. It is time you learned what that means." I sat down on the stone and gestured. "Sit."

In moments, she was sitting cross-legged before me, an excited grin on her face.

"To be Mandalorian is to be both Hunter, and Prey. That is a truth all Mandalorians must recognize." I nodded to her. "But it is more literal for us.

"You are a part of the world around you. You know this. What you must learn is that the world is also a part of you." I gestured and at the same time let my presence shine. Mara twitched at the sensation. I grinned. "Everything is connected. The wind, the grass, the rocks, the people. _Everything_.

"It is a vibrant web that runs through everything in the universe. The Jedi call it the Force. The Witches of Dathomir call it magic." I paused and watched her eyes light up. "I call it _life_."

"Your prey has eluded you. Focus." I gestured and she closed her eyes. "You have studied its wake, learned from its passing. Concentrate on what it is. The way it walks. The trees it eats. The paths it chooses. Know it as you do yourself.

"Hold it in your mind and your heart. And know that it is a part of you, just as you are a part of it." Mara's face scrunched in concentration.

"Breathe." My voice shifted, growing quieter as I felt her presence begin to grow.

"Let the world flow through you," I whispered, closing my eyes. The gentle embers of her presence flared into an open flame. I embraced it with my own, guiding her awareness out.

"Let yourself feel that distant part of you." In the distance, a faint echo of her shone like a beacon. I injected a hint of predatory glee into my tone. "And seize it."

The world shuddered and the bond was forged.

I let my presence recede and opened my eyes. Mara had frozen half-turned, her sightless eyes locked on the disturbed grass in the distance. We remained like that for several seconds.

She blinked, and time began to move again. She nearly fell, catching herself with one hand. Sweat stained her shirt. Her breath came in quick gulps. She tore her gaze away from the trail and over to me. Her eyes were wild.

"W-what was that?"

"That," I said. I didn't bother to hide the approval and satisfaction in my voice. "Was your first step. Very well done."

"It was... more," she said after a moment. Her breathing began to slow as she marshalled her thoughts. "Just... more, than I expected."

"Yes." I smiled under my helmet. "It always is."

She stood up, and I followed. She pointed toward the trail.

"It's that way," she said with a shake of her head. She looked back at me. "I'm not sure how, but I know it."

I nodded and gestured for her to lead on.

She charged off. I had to hurry to follow.

She led me along the indaraz's trail without hesitation. No more were there false trails or doubling back. Every sign of its passage was noted, the trail as clear to her as an open road.

We followed it for almost an hour, until I spotted a small scuff torn into a tree.

"Hold, Mara." She stopped and turned to me with a questioning gaze.

"It went this way," she said. One slim finger pointed to a depression in the grass, a swathe torn out by the indaraz's belly. "Didn't it?"

"It did," I said, and fell silent. I could feel the wheels turning in her head. She knew by now I wouldn't have stopped her for no reason.

"Okay..." She walked over to me and tried to follow my gaze. When she didn't find anything, she turned back to me. "What did I miss?"

I walked over to the tree and tapped it next to the mark. Then pointed at the torn up dirt a few meters beyond. The claw marks were unmistakable.

"These are from a _cathan'dare_," I said. My finger moved along its faint trail, in the same direction Mara had pointed moments before. "There is more than one hunter after this prey."

She cursed.

"A _cathan'dare_," she said, Mando'a clearly awkward on her tongue. "That's what that big skull was, right? In the Trophy Hall?"

"Originally." I nodded. She studied the _cathan'dare_'s tracks and bit her lip uncertainly. I let her digest that for a long moment before I spoke again. "Do you wish to continue this hunt?"

She twitched, her eyes shooting over to lock on me. Horror was etched into every line of her face.

"What? Yes!"

"There is no shame in yielding your prey to a superior hunter," I said. I gestured at her and the other predator's tracks. "It's not ideal, but you would not be the first."

She scowled at me and looked away. Her mind and emotions raced in frantic circles, until she seemed to come to a revelation. The tension leaked from her body and was replaced by a calm determination.

"You said a Mandalorian needs to find enemies to push their limits." She gave me a steady look and gestured at the tracks. "I just found one."

I blinked. I... hadn't been expecting that response. A laugh began to bubble up from my gut, and it was clear in my voice.

"So you did."

(*)(*)(*)

"It's close." Mara's whisper was barely audible over the wind. She reached back and pulled out her spear.

Behind her, I nodded. The indaraz's simple contentment shone like a beacon. It lay in a half-doze just few dozen meters past the trees we hid behind. Mara's attention was locked on it.

Which meant she hadn't noticed the silent hunger stalking toward it from our left.

I felt the _cathan'dare_ slink through the grass. Its progress was slow, methodical, and fearless. Its attention swept around like a searchlight, never resting on any single place for long, only to return to the indaraz. Between the distance and the wind, it was as ignorant of us as Mara was of it.

Satisfied, I turned my attention back to Mara. The spear sat comfortably in her grip, a far cry from the previous day. She was mumbling to herself and mentally running through the handful of strikes I'd spent the previous evening and morning drilling into her.

"Remember," I said. She gave an aborted flinch and looked at me. "Low and slow until -"

"It reacts." She nodded. She blew out a heavy breath. "Let's do it."

I grunted and slid out from behind the trees, and Mara slipped into place behind me. The grass hid me easily, but Mara had to crouch. She moved as I'd taught her as we followed the trail. Her steps were light, her body low, taking full advantage of the cover the grass offered. Her motions were awkward and unpracticed, but she had a natural grace that compensated for it well.

I had no doubt she'd move like a whisper on the wind, in time.

Ahead of us, the indaraz was resting in the middle of the open plain like an enormous, hairy spider. Six thick legs, each one wider than most trees, rose in arches, the peaks almost three meters above the top of the grass. The legs all met together in a massive ball of fur and flesh, one side of which was dominated by an enormous maw and two pairs of eyes. A pair of, comparatively, small tentacles twitched on either side of its mouth.

The approach was easy. Indaraz were never the most alert or aggressive of beasts; at their size, they had no need to be. It didn't react until there were only a few meters left to go.

It leapt and toward us, letting out a sound like rocks being fed into a grinder. Mara hesitated, surprise and sudden, instinctive fear gripping her. I surged forward and to the side, my spear flashing.

Beskar cleaved through skin and fur like paper. Thick, purple blood, splattered across the grass.

The indaraz reared and its injured leg lashed out at me. I dove forward, its foot slamming down with enough force to make the ground shake. My spear lashed out again, thrusting toward its eyes. The beast flinched back, getting away with only a light cut across its snout. It made another grinding sound of pain and rage.

In the distance, I felt surprise and excitement spike in the _cathan'dare_. A small, distant part of my mind noted the way its approach became a circle. The rest of me ignored it to focus on the beast in front of me.

While the indaraz was distracted, Mara charged in with a cry, thrusting her spear into the base of one of its legs. The spear struck true, sinking deep into the closest thing it had to an armpit. The leg went limp, and nearly pulled the spear out of Mara's hand.

She threw herself back, the spear going with her and pulling more blood and pained cries from the indaraz.

I repeated my earlier thrust, jumping over its wild thrashing in the process, and this time hit. Blood and bits of eye flew through the air.

The indaraz panicked and tried to run, its dead leg dragging behind it.

On its second full step, Mara surged out of the grass and thrust her spear once more. Beskar slid cleanly between the indaraz's ribs, and in the blink of an eye, over half the spear disappeared inside it.

Raw momentum tore the spear out of Mara's grip, sending her spinning away as the indaraz tried to continue on.

It made it almost a dozen meters before it collapsed.

"It, it's dead?" Mara asked, panting, as she got back on her feet.

"Soon," I said. I walked over and joined her in approaching the dying beast. I reached out with my power and pulled her spear from the dying beast. It let out a pained groan and went still. The spear hung beside her, dripping gore into the grass. "You did well."

"Thanks." She looked at me and grabbed the spear. A shake of her hand tossed the worst of it aside. "Now what?"

"Now you defend it." I jerked my head at the rapidly-approaching presence of the _cathan'dare_ and jumped away. She turned in that direction.

"Fro- _Sithspit!_" Mara snapped and threw herself back, moments before the beast burst out of the grass.

It was a large quadrupedal reptile, the mottled green and orange of its scales shining in the late-afternoon sunlight. Each of its limbs ended in vicious, serrated claws. A short, rigid tail stretched out behind it. It's head is what captured the attention, though. It had a long, ridged snout that swept back into a bony crest. Its crest was at full extension, the shockingly bright red of it eye catching like nothing else.

Enormous, razor-sharp teeth were bared at Mara and I in turn.

"What does it want?" Mara asked, her voice quiet and tense.

"Your kill," I said, just as tense.

"Well it can't have it," she snapped.

The _cathan'dare_ snapped its attention to her and she paused. It hissed again.

I nodded.

"Then defend it," I said, my voice as calm and even as I could manage. I backed away slowly and forced my body language to be relaxed and non-threatening. Mara sent me a sideways, incredulous look, one eye locked on the lizard. "This is your foe. That is your kill. _You_ must defend it. This is the way."

Mara growled and spat out something unkind.

"It is a part of you," I told her. It hissed again, even louder and snapped its jaws at her. She gave me a sharp nod. "Seize it."

Then there was no more time for talk.

The _cathan'dare_ charged at her with a sound like a boiling kettle. She yelped in surprise and fear, but terror lent her wings. She threw herself to the side moments before it barrelled through, and just barely missed being gutted by its claws.

She shrieked in fear and anger and before she'd even returned to her feet, stabbed after it with her spear. Beskar cut through scales as easily as flesh, and a line of red blood welled up along the lizard's tail.

It shrieked, more from surprise than pain, and whirled around in an instant. Mara, still struggling to her feet, had no time to dodge. The bony crest caught her in the chest and flung her over a meter through the air.

She landed heavily, a pained wheeze the only sound she could make.

The _cathan'dare_ hissed in triumph and charged once more. It crossed the distance in an instant and pounced

My hand shot up, my mind already reaching beyond my physical shell, when I felt it.

Mara suddenly blazed in my senses once more, a roaring flame of focus, passion, and stubborn refusal. She spun, rolling up over her head and snatching up her spear in the same motion.

She thrust, even as the beast was falling onto her. Beskar, honed and shaped by generations of skill, and driven by the creature's own immense weight bit into its throat, through its spine and out the other side.

The _cathan'dare_ died instantly.

I caught its body with my power, holding it in midair as Mara collapsed beneath it. With a gesture, I dropped it safely to the side, then walked over to her. The girl stared up at me, her breath coming in pained gasps. She'd bruised a rib or two, at least. In addition, a long and shallow, but painful looking, cut ran down the length of her forearm.

But despite all that, she was grinning.

"I, uh." Her voice was thin and pained, and full of far too much adrenaline to care about that. "Do all hunts end like this?"

I sat down beside her.

"Only the good ones."

A quiet snore was her only response.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

"That's enough," I said once the distant whine of an approaching speeder reached my ears. Mara made a happy sound and stood up. "The hauler is almost here."

"Finally." She stepped back from the _cathan'dare_'s carcass and flicked her arm. Blood flew off her knife and splattered against the grass, setting it to swaying. She sheathed the knife on her first try and sent me a questioning look. "Same as the indaraz?"

I nodded and moved beside her. Together, we extended our hands and our minds.

Her presence burned, full of enthusiasm and wonder. It danced like a flame, chaotic and unrestrained. Small tongues would lap at the world around it. I could feel her attention flit along with it, racing out and back in equal measure.

"Discipline," I said. I let my own presence press against hers. She let out a breath.

"Focus." Iron bands of determination clamped onto her drifting presence. Her attention shifted, narrowed, until only myself and the carcass remained.

"Control." My voice hung heavy in the still air. "All must be in harmony."

She nodded. With a quick breath, her face scrunched up in concentration. Her presence began to writhe once more.

"Relax," I said. She stilled, inside and out. "Do not reach for it. _Be it_."

"I am a part of the world," Mara said. Her voice was quiet and intense, focused. "And the world is a part of me."

Her presence shifted, softening at the edges as the line between it and its surroundings began to blur. It began to pulse in time with the beat of life all around us.

"Focus," I said. My voice was low and quiet, barely audible even to my own ears.

She heard me none the less.

Her presence drifted out, flowing in random spurts. It licked against the grass and earth and, in time, the _cathan'dare_'s carcass.

"The world is a part of you," I said. "Control yourself, and you will control the world."

She let out a breath. Her presence froze, locked behind focused will. Her hand began to rise.

The carcass rose with it.

Her presence rippled with excitement and pride, the edges sharp and clear, and the carcass crashed back to the earth.

"Agh!" The rush of excitement and adrenaline turned into raw energy. "I had it!"

"You did," I said. I didn't disguise the satisfaction in my voice. "And you lost it."

She made a disgruntled noise. "One more try."

I glanced over my shoulder. She followed my gaze. The speeder was visible now, and barely more than a minute or two out.

"Later," I said. Mara sighed but nodded.

With an effort of will, I hoisted the carcass into the air and let the carefully-excised viscera inside drop onto the earth. Mara let out a noise at the sound and mess, but she didn't flinch away from it.

By the time I'd dropped the cleaned carcass beside that of the indaraz, the speeder had arrived.

"Rinna." I nodded a greeting at the tall woman as she hopped out of the speeder.

Rinna returned my nod with one of her own then greeted Mara in turn.

"_Olarom_," she said. Her gaze flicked across the carcasses and she looked at Mara. "Your hunt has gone well. An indaraz is no easy prey."

Mara flushed at the complement.

"Thanks."

"The _cathan'dare_ tried to take the kill?" Rinna glanced at me. I remained silent.

"Yes," Mara answered after a beat. "We found its tracks following the indaraz, but it didn't show itself until after I'd killed the indaraz."

Rinna hummed.

"Unfortunate." She looked at me again. "It is good you were here."

I shook my head.

"I didn't touch it."

Rinna blinked. Her sharp, considering gaze locked onto Mara.

"Did you now?"

I nodded while Mara tried not to fidget.

"What?" The girl scowled at Rinna. Rinna continued to stare for several long seconds.

"It has been..." She glanced at me. "A long time since a _cathan'dare_ was slain during _olar'oya_."

I nodded.

Mara frowned and looked at me.

"It has?"

"Yes." I waved a hand at the carcasses. "You have done very well."

"I will be watching your rise with great interest," Rinna said. She gestured at the speeder. "Now come, we should load the skiff. You must return to be honored accordingly."

(*) (*) (*)

By the time we returned to the enclave, preparations for the feast were well under way. We found ourselves at the edge of the central clearing, watching as dozens of people ran around and through the _Naur'beskar_. Even from here, it was obvious the meeting hall, the closest thing to a throne room Mandalore had accepted all those years ago, had been packed to the brim with the leaders of the clans. Tables, complete with clan heraldry and symbols, were being assembled in the grass before it with practiced ease.

And all around the frenzied activity, the rest of the enclave had begun the celebration early. Alcohol and music flowed easily through the milling crowd, painting the air with easy satisfaction and excitement.

But even that paled in comparison to the free-flowing street brawl that swept through the crowd, picking up new fighters as quickly as others grew tired and left.

"Already," Rinna sighed with a shake of her head, and a decent attempt at disguising her desire to join in.

"Are they," Mara began, only to stop when a young woman was bodily thrown into the air and disappeared back into the crowd. "That can't be safe."

"We are Mandalorian," I said. A satisfied chuckle rolled out of my throat. "Safe is for other people."

Mara considered that for a moment.

"Point." She shook her head. "So what now?"

"I bring your kills to the kitchen," Rinna said. "And you enjoy the party."

Mara glanced at the moving brawl and shot me a distressed look.

"_Mosh'ga_," I said. Recognition flashed in her eyes. The quasi-ritual had been a topic we'd covered on the trip from her homeworld. It was an old tradition, from back before the Purge, a release of aggression and excitement that preceded almost every large gathering of Mandalorians. It had proven still necessary after the clans had been brought together once more.

Not even Mandalore the Ascendant could settle all of the old grudges.

"I had expected something more... formal," Mara said.

"This is the way," Rinna said. Her tone was wry, and her lips twitched in a suppressed smile. She turned and grabbed the hoversled and pushed it away. "I must go."

We said our goodbyes and turned back to the crowd. Mara shot me a nervous look. I chuckled and started moving.

"Walk with confidence," I said over my shoulder. "And they'll leave you be."

She muttered a couple of disparaging comments about my sanity, but followed nonetheless.

We crossed the clearing in short order, slipping into the crowd just behind the trailing edge of the _mosh'ga_. Tables and benches were strewn across the grass at random, thrown about by the frenetic energy of the brawl. Tired and cheerful Mandalorians were already at work setting it back to rights, all the while keeping up an unending stream of insults and jibes at the pair that lay slumped and barely conscious on the grass. The young men, one from Clan Ordo and the other from Clan Kryze, had all but beaten each other unconscious and, with the _mosh'ga_ having moved on, could now barely move, let alone conclude the fight.

"That really all you've got, Renden?" I called out. The pile of blue armor and sweat groaned. "Larren will have you running laps for the rest of your life if you pass out already."

"G- go to hell, Kuiil," Renden panted out. He managed to lift his head with a herculean effort and shot me an annoyed look through the already-forming black eye. "I'm no, not done yet."

A gauntleted hand, clad in the purple and red of Clan Ordo, rose and fell limply onto his chest, and that was enough to push him all the way back down.

"Yer done," his opponent said, punchdrunk, slurring and obviously just as tired. "You're... yer done Kryze."

Renden made an angry noise but, despite his best efforts, failed to get back up.

"Laps should be the least of his worries." A new voice cut in. I nodded a greeting to the grizzled older human wearing the colors of Clan Kryze. His protege groaned loudly, earning a sharp look. "If you have that much energy, you can give me ten."

Renden opened his mouth, paused, closed it, and with a tired grunt began a series of slow, laborious pushups. Larren grunted his approval and turned to me, one fist slapping against his chest.

"Welcome back, sir." I returned the salute with a quiet sigh. He relaxed and turned to Mara. "And you must be the new foundling."

Mara sent me a nervous glance, shook her head, and returned the man's gaze.

"Mara Jade," she said. One hand reached out before she fumbled and started to turn the gesture into a salute.

"Larren, of Clan Kryze." He reached out and clasped her forearm before she could retract it. A small smile pulled at the scar on his cheek. "Welcome and well met. Bringing down an indaraz for _olar'oya_ is no small feat."

"How-?"

"I saw Rinna hauling it into the kitchens." He jerked his thumb over his shoulder, toward the side of the forge. He turned to me with an inquisitive look. "There was a _cathan'dare_ on the sled as well."

"Oh, uh, yeah." Mara blinked when his attention snapped back to her. "What? It tried to take my kill."

A rustle spread like fire through the crowd around us. Renden made a quiet thud as one arm gave out, but he paid it no mind, his eyes fixed on Mara. Larren just blinked for a long moment, then he turned to me with an almost audible sound.

"...Truly?"

I snorted and let my helmet hide my smirk while Mara scowled at him.

"Yes really," she said with a huff. He looked from her to me and back and shook his head.

"I should not be so surprised," he said at last, the closest thing to an apology I'd ever seen in his eyes. He blew out a heavy breath and forcibly composed himself. This time, he saluted Mara with a sober look. "Well met indeed, _Kyr'Dare_."

Mara blinked, her head cocking at the unfamiliar phrase. Before she could ask, I reached out and pushed her leg once more. She stumbled, caught herself, and hurried to follow when I bade Larren goodbye and made for the hall. The low murmur of fresh gossip mixed with the excited violence of the _mosh'ga_ behind us.

"_Kyr'Dare_?" she asked, her voice barely audible over the noise. A throaty chuckle rolled out of me.

"He's being dramatic," I said. After a moment's pause, I shrugged. "Though not inaccurate."

"But what's it mean?"

"Slayer of Monsters." I kept walking as she stopped and had to hurry to catch back up a moment later, her surprise heavy in the air. Before she could speak, I continued. "He's being dramatic, yes. You've earned it nonetheless. Wear it with pride."

I waved a hand around at the crowd whose interest, if not attention, was, by now, firmly on the pair of us. She followed my gesture with wide eyes.

"I g-guess I will," she said. Her voice betrayed her nerves, but she was making a good effort to hide it otherwise.

"You'll be fine," I told her as we finally reached the enormous doors to the hall. They'd been thrown open for the festivities, and while the hall was much less crowded than the exterior, it was no less energetic.

It was a long hall of duracrete and plasteel filled with a score of large tables. Seated at each were several armored figures in the same colors as the banners bearing their clan signets overhead. The groupings were broken only by the small handful who had joined old friends, or rivals, at another clan's table. But I paid it little mind.

My attention was, as always, caught by the wooden throne atop the raised platform at the back. A suit of polished beskar was arranged atop it, as if its owner had only just sat down. It was a simple set of armor, unadorned plates of beskar over a black weave. The only ornamentation it bore was a stylized mudhorn skull welded to the right pauldron. A banner with the same signet covered most of the wall behind it, dwarfing every other banner in the hall. And at the base of the platform, set in a recessed pit that could be seen from anywhere in the hall, roared a blazing fire.

The simple, elegant lines of my father's armor gleamed, as it did every moment of every day, in the light of his pyre.

Mara took it all in with wide eyes. I walked past her with a chuckle.

"Come, it is time you meet the Clan."

She nodded and, with a shake of her head, fell into step with me. I returned the greetings that were called to us, and noted the handful of challenging and considering looks, while I led her to the table closest to the platform. The banner of Clan Djarin hung overhead, smaller and less finely made than my father's but no less regal for it. A handful of people dressed in black and silver sat around it, along with a single young man only a couple of years older than Mara in the blue and white of Clan Viszla.

"Uncle Kuiil!" A young girl reacted faster than the rest of her family, hopping off her chair and barreling into me with as much force as she could muster. A flash of dark hair and pale skin filled my vision and I let out a strangled yelp. I had to reach out with my power to stop us both from tumbling, even as I returned her hug.

"I missed you too, Naka," I said, into her shoulder now I noticed. I stepped back from the hug and shook my head. "You're getting a little too big for that, you're growing like a weed."

She grinned unrepentantly. I snorted a laugh, and looked to Mara.

"Mara Jade, meet Naka Djarin." I pointed beyond Naka to the others watching amusedly from the table. They each greeted her in their own way as I rattled off the names of my clan, until I finished by pointing at the young man from Clan Viszla. My eyes narrowed and my voice lowered as I stared at him. "And this is Rah Viszla."

The kid swallowed and waved at me.

"Uh... hi Kuiil, uh, sir." He glanced back at the others and blanched at the glare Broc, the clan head, leveled on him. His vambraces, the only armor he'd yet earned, made a rattling noise against the table.

"He seeks to court Bhay," Broc said with a growl. A scowl twisted his short beard into an angry mass of gray. Naka's sister rolled her eyes even as Rah made a strangled sound.

"He does?" I approached the table and looked to Bhay. Her dark eyes flashed in a challenging grin. I shook my head. "I pity the fool."

"Oh, lighten up uncle," Naka's mother, Vayc, said with a grin as the table erupted in laughter. She gave me a gentle shove. "They get enough of that from grandfather."

Vayc turned to Mara with a smile, while I climbed up into my chair and pulled off my helmet.

"_Olarom_, Mara." One hand gestured at the new chair next to my own. "Be welcome at our table."

"_Vor en- entye_," Mara thanked her with a momentary stutter. She made a gesture somewhere between a bow and a nod and hurried to sit. The moment she did, Naka's other sister leaned in, her breastplate clicking against the table.

"So where are you from Mara?" Lin asked.

"Sorgan," Mara said. She shook her head. "You've probably never heard of it."

Lin opened her mouth to speak when Din, her grandfather, cut in.

"On the contrary. Mandalore spent some time there, long ago." He glanced at me. "He saved a village from some raiders, and almost left them to raise the old man in his place, in fact."

Mara blinked and shot me a look.

"I was young, and I don't remember it very well." I shrugged. "I can't be sure, but with my luck, it was probably your ancestors."

"Wait, really?" Mara said.

"I've found that, for those like you and I, coincidences like this are rarely as random as they may appear." I gave her a very direct look. "You will learn, soon enough."

Understanding flashed behind her eyes.

"I'll have to," she said. She turned back to find Naka in her face.

"Tell us about it!" The little girl said with a toothy grin. "You've gotta have some stories, right?"

Mara blinked, shook her head, and after a moment's hesitation began to speak. She started stiff and awkward, but Naka's obvious interest, and the more subdued but equally obvious attention from the rest of the clan, thawed it quickly. Especially once Bhay joined in and the pair of them started trading teasing barbs.

I sat back and watched for a few minutes as she fielded the interest of the rest of the clan, enjoying the sight of them all so happy, only to find Vayc's mother Ursa hovering over me. The old woman gave me a smile with strength that belied her slight frame.

"You made a good choice," she said. Her voice lowered, even as Bhay's squawk of indignation ensured no one else could hear us. "Is she..."

"An orphan," I said, just as quietly. "The Remnant."

"I see." A grim smile touched her lips. "That is a blight we're all too familiar with."

I nodded and leaned back, while Ursa returned to her seat. The sight of my clan, my _family_, laughing and playing with each other soon banished the pall that had settled over me. I couldn't help but smile. Mara would be alright, we'd all make sure of it.

(*)(*)(*)

The next hour passed in a haze of pleasant conversation that ended abruptly with the cry of a hunting horn. The sound was deafening, ringing over and through the roar of the _mosh'ga_ with ease, and in its wake was left a brittle silence. It lasted for only a heartbeat, broken as dozens of feet rushed to take their rightful place, to clear a path between the _Naur'beskar_ and the meeting hall. Even inside the hall, there was no escape, as every Mandalorian leapt to their feet, conversation forgotten, and their attention fixed on the forge.

The Forgemaster stood, her silent armored form motionless as she waited for the path to form, and she was not alone. Rinna stood a pace behind her, a hunting horn of carved bone on one hip and an elaborate leather case on the other. Behind her hovered a pair of repulsor sleds, the cooked meat and bones of Mara's kills arranged on them such that none could deny what they'd been in life. Especially not with the _cathan'dare_ skull in pride of place on its sled.

The moment the path opened, the Forgemaster began to move. Her steps were as precise as her hammer, a steady relentless beat one could set a watch to, and with each one a dull roar began to build. Every mando she passed picked up the beat, slamming a fist to their chest until a thrumming heartbeat filled the air. It grew louder and louder, into an echoing roar that filled the hall like a living thing.

And then she reached the fire, and it ended as abruptly as it had begun.

"The way of Mandalore is paved with conflict," she said, still facing into the fire. Her voice was firm and in the silence carried easily all the way through the hall and beyond. "It is one of struggle, violence, and sacrifice. For there is no other way. Honor is the soul of the _Mando'ade_, and honor is to earn." She turned to face the gathered whole of our people. "Something given can be taken, just as something taken has no meaning. There is no value, no honor, without _sacrifice_."

"To be Mandalorian is to earn your honor. To sacrifice. And with that sacrifice, as Mandalore the Ascendant taught us, win peace."

She paused, her helmet panning over the crowd before it ended on Mara Jade.

"This is the way."

"This is the way!" The entire gathering replied as one, voices mixing together into a cacophony of noise.

"Kuiil of Clan Djarin. Mara Jade of Sorgan. Step forward."

Together, Mara Jade and I stepped away from the table and took up position between the repulsor sled and the Forgemaster. She waited a beat, letting the rustle of cloth and beskar die down as the others took their seats once more. As soon as silence fell, she began to speak.

"Mara Jade of Sorgan, you wish to become Mandalorian."

Mara swallowed once and forced her nerves down. "I- I do."

"Kuiil of Clan Djarin. Is she worthy?"

"_Olar'oya_ has been called and answered," I said. I hopped up onto one of the repulsor sleds and looked over the gathered crowd. "Let any who would challenge her worth speak now."

Silence reigned for several long heartbeats. There was a subtle, barely-repressed twitch from Clan Ordo's table, I would have missed it entirely if not for my greater senses, but none rose or spoke against her.

"So be it," the Forgemaster said. She signalled to Rinna, who pulled the leather case from her back, while I hopped off the sled and resumed my position. Rinna opened the case and held it out to her mother.

The Forgemaster reached it and pulled out a pair of beskar cylinders, a few inches across and most of a foot long. A twist of her fingers broke them open on nearly-invisible hinges and she looked to Mara.

"Mara Jade of Sorgan, you have answered the call of _olar'oya_. You have proven your worth in the eyes of Mandalore. Step forward and be recognized."

Mara took a step forward and held out her hands. The Forgemaster clasped the vambraces over Mara's forearms and sealed them. The beskar gleamed the same color as her hair in the light of the fire.

"With this, no longer are you Mara Jade of Sorgan. Now, you are Mara Jade of Clan Djarin. Now, you are Mandalorian."

"_Ijaat!_" The Forgemaster's voice cut through the silence like a knife. A visible ripple spread through the hall with the sound, as Mandalorians of all clans rose to their feet. As one, their fists clapped against their chests and they spoke, dozens of voices coming together into a wave of raw sound.

"_Olarom!_"

Mara blinked and, a heartbeat later, a savage grin graced her lips. With barely a moment's hesitation, she raised a clenched fist and gave the traditional response as if she'd been speaking Mando'a all her life.

"_Shereshoy Mando'ade!_"

The returning cheers were deafening.

"Now, it is time for _olar'skraan_." The Forgemaster's voice cut effortlessly through the noise, and the cheering quickly died down. She gently guided Mara around to face Rinna, who pulled an elaborate knife from her belt and offered it hilt-first to Mara.

"To the victor, the spoils," Rinna said. When Mara took the knife, I stepped behind her. "This is the way."

Mara blinked, but nodded and, after grabbing a plate from the sled, piled a couple cuts from each of her kills onto it. When neither I nor the Forgemaster spoke, a sudden flurry of excited and surprised whispers spread through the crowd.

Mara gave an uncertain look around, then at me. I gave her my best encouraging look and jerked my head toward the table. She moved, and once I'd filled up a plate, I joined her. As soon as I moved away, the hall filled with bustle once more as everyone else hurried to the sleds and began to serve themselves, from either Mara's kills or the handful of other sleds full of food from the larders that had been rolled out while the ceremony had been under way.

Mara and I made our way back to our seats, while she tried and generally failed to ignore the many, many looks she was now receiving. We'd barely sat back down before Bhay ran over and leaned across the table.

"Was it really yours?!" she demanded.

Mara blinked. "Was what mine?"

"The _cathan'dare_! You killed it?! It wasn't Uncle Kuiil?!"

"I didn't touch it," I said. When the attention of both the whole table and those still picking out meat from the sled fell on me, I ignored it and began to eat. The cooks had outdone themselves this time around.

Bhay's mouth worked a few times, but no words came out. Mara smirked and, before it could fall off, began to eat as well.

"Oh you're good..." Bhay said a moment later, her eyes narrowing. One hand slapped against the table, her vambrace clinking lightly as it bumped against the wood. "But you won't stay ahead of me for long!"

Mara just gave her best innocent expression, which Bhay returned with a glare. A few heartbeats passed, and Mara cracked first, a small giggle forcing its way out. At that Bhay broke and started laughing as well.

"I think I'm gonna enjoy having you around," Bhay said at last.

Mara's smile was blinding.

"Me too."


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

Air hissed and whooshed around Mara's staff, ending in a sharp clack as her opponent caught the blow with her dagger centimeters from her shoulder. Bhay slid for an instant across the loose sand. Her foot twisted and caught, anchoring her long enough to push the staff up while she ducked under it. She surged into Mara's guard, the dagger in her other hand flashing for her chest.

Mara threw herself back and the other end of her staff swung up in a clumsy arc. The staff caught Bhay in the chest, but she pushed off the ground and let it carry her into a leap all the way over Mara's head. She landed in a roll behind Mara and got back to her feet just as Mara finished turning around.

"Anticipate," I said. My voice carried easily in the ensuing beat of silence. "Don't react."

Mara grunted and launched into another offensive. Her staff swept toward Bhay's right leg. Bhay planted herself and turned her leg, taking the blow on her shin with a suppressed wince. I made a disapproving noise. Bhay ignored me and thrust both daggers straight at Mara's chest.

Mara stepped to her right and shoved her staff into Bhay's arms, pushing the thrust wide. Which left nothing to block Bhay's foot as it slammed into her stomach. Her breath exploded out and she staggered back half a step, but even as she did the staff in her hands spun around. The tip caught Bhay in the shoulder, turning her victorious smirk into a flinch and a yelp of pain.

The dagger fell from Bhay's hand, and before it even hit the ground she was moving. Bhay rushed down the length of the staff and slammed the hilt of her remaining dagger into Mara's wrist. Mara released her staff with a cry. With a twist of her wrist, Bhay swung the dagger around.

"Gev!" I said. They both froze, the blunted edge of Bhay's dagger nearly touching Mara's pulse. For a long moment, the only sound was their panting. Then the tension drained out of them both.

"Good fight," Mara said. She staggered back a few steps and let herself drop onto the sand. Her other hand came up to massage her wrist. "That was a new move."

"Yeah." Bhay scooped up her fallen dagger and sheathed her weapons on either hip. One hand ran through long, dark, and sweat-soaked hair. "Lin gave me the idea the other day."

"Oh?" The smirk on Mara's face lost something with her panting. "So now you're running to Lin for help to beat me?"

Bhay sputtered.

"As if! I don't need Lin to handle you." Bhay turned away, trying desperately to hide the blush creeping across her cheeks. After a brief internal struggle, she turned back and smirked down at Mara. "I won, after all."

"You surprised me!" Mara scowled. Bhay thrust out a hand. Mara grabbed it and let her haul her back onto her feet. Mara's arms and legs both quivered slightly, but when she picked up her staff and stood tall, she was stable. "This time, you're going down."

Bhay flashed her a challenging grin. "You want to lose again that badly?"

"Not today," I said as I stepped into the practice ring. Mara's mouth snapped closed and she shot me a betrayed look. "We have other training."

Bhay laughed at the grin that sprouted on Mara's face. She gave me a lazy salute and walked off.

"You got lucky this time," she said over her shoulder. "Be ready to lose tomorrow."

"I'm letting you run away," Mara shot back, fighting unsuccessfully to suppress her smile. She tapped the butt of her staff on the ground. "Remember that."

Bhay just laughed and waved without turning around. Mara stuck her tongue out at Bhay's back, then hurried over and set her staff against the wall. When she returned, I let her wait for a long moment and, once her breathing began to slow, spoke.

"Third form." Mara slid into the appropriate stance, turned slightly to her right with her feet shoulder width apart and her hands raised in a loose guard. I looked over her form, nodded, and took up the same stance beside her. "Begin."

As one, we moved at a glacial pace. Invisible assailants sprung up and were struck down in slow motion. Hands and feet both swept out over and over in the wide, sweeping attacks of the third form I'd taught her. Beside me, Mara's motions were rough still, her lack of time with the style clear, but she did not err.

"Good," I said as we came to the end. "You remember."

"It's hard not to." Mara's voice held the barest hint of strain. "Not after last week."

"As it should be. Now do it again," I said, and as I began the dance again, I opened myself to the universe. The vibrant pulse of life beat against me in a steady rhythm, no source brighter than the girl at my side. Her presence burned like an open flame, as brilliant as it was chaotic.

"Focus," I said. My presence nudged against hers. "Know yourself, and you will know the universe."

Mara let out a slow breath. Her presence slowed, settling to match the speed of her motions. I could feel her attention as it turned inward.

"Discipline." My voice thundered in the silence. Mara's presence writhed once more, but her body never stopped and she quickly restored her focus. "Control yourself, and you will control the universe."

"Honor." The words tumbled out of my mouth on autopilot as I lost myself in the familiar motions. "Be yourself, and you will be the universe."

I let the steady beat of life flow through me, my physical shell forgotten. Beside me, Mara's presence softened. The steady thrum slowly began to beat through her as well.

We moved as one, and together, the cadence of the dance began to rise.

"These are the truths of the Mando'ade."

My voice was underwritten by the rustle of sand and cloth, by the sharp stamp of kicks, by the thump of flesh on flesh, as our imagined attackers became that much more real.

"Guidance when all else is lost."

Mara didn't miss a beat. Her movements were precise and the air cracked with the speed of her blows. Her presence sang against mine, her memories and fears giving shape to the phantoms I fought just as mine did for her. Together, we let our unreal foes come, and together, we struck them down.

"The Way of Mandalore."

With a final lunging strike, the kata came to an end. We held that pose for a long moment, and I let my presence recede. My muscles started to burn with a pleasant ache. With a heavy breath, I let myself relax.

"Well done," I said. I turned to Mara and, with an effort of will, caught her before she could fall. Sweat poured freely down her face, and she panted heavily in my grasp. She nodded her thanks at me, lacking the breath to speak, and I lowered her to the ground.

Then I sat down beside her and waited. For several minutes, she lay motionless. When she finally sat up, it was with a resigned scowl.

The last few weeks had long since inured her to this ritual.

"What does it mean?" I asked. She sighed. Her discontent, frustration, and uncertainty whirled in the air around her.

"It means that I need to know myself and recognize my strengths and weaknesses. I need to know who and what I am, so I can change it to what I want it to be."

I considered her answer for a long moment.

"You are learning," I said at last. She started to smile, but I raised a hand. "But you are not there yet."

Mara made a sound somewhere between a growl and a snarl.

"This would be a lot easier if you just told me already."

"I cannot." I gave her my most solemn look. "The only answer with value is the one you find yourself. You will find it in time."

She nodded with another sigh. "Yes Kuiil."

"Good." I hopped to my feet and gestured for her to do the same. She gave me a dirty look, but forced herself to comply. "Take a walk to cool down, then you're free for the rest of the afternoon."

She blinked and flashed me a tired grin. "See you at dinner then."

(*)(*)(*)

"Oh? That's new." I let out an appreciative hum as a holographic monster stepped in and in a single swing killed both pieces on my front line. I studied the state of the dejarik board for a long moment, my mind racing for ways to patch the sudden hole my opponent had carved in my defenses. "You've been practicing."

"I have." Katha smirked. Afternoon sunlight caught in her long, golden hair, giving a stark contrast to the predatory gleam in her dark eyes. She gestured at the board and her newly-dominant position. "This game will be mine."

"Perhaps." After another moment's thought, I keyed a command and watched silently as one of my pieces stepped over and claimed her offering. Which still left me at a three to two disadvantage.

She hummed thoughtfully and moved a backline piece to one side.

"There are no possibilities," she said, the mocking quote clear in her tone. "Only unearned certainties."

She gave me a challenging look. "I have earned this one."

"Perhaps," I repeated. She stuck out her tongue at me with a laugh, though it cut off abruptly as one of my pieces moved. "Or perhaps not."

She shook her head and studied the board for a long moment.

"Speaking of possibilities," she said without looking up. "How fares Mara's training?"

"Very well," I said. One of her pieces moved into range, and I pounced, taking her piece but leaving my own vulnerable to the backline piece she'd moved earlier. She blinked, but I continued before she could speak.

"The girl's a natural. She's nearly of a level with Bhay already."

"She is good for Bhay," Katha said, without making her own move. "I have never seen my niece so motivated. And her more... esoteric talents?"

"Katha Djarin," I said, and fixed her with a mild glare. Though the effect was likely undercut somewhat by the smile I struggled to hide. "Are you attempting to distract me?"

"That would depend," she said with a smirk. "Is it working?"

I opened my mouth to respond, but before I could, a series of rapid knocks heralded Rinna's entrance. She nodded a quick greeting to me and her mother, her expression serious.

Katha's scowl was visible for a brief instant before, in a single motion, she scooped her helmet off the table and donned it. In that instant, Katha Djarin was gone; the Forgemaster had taken her place.

"Mother, Kuiil, we have an emergency," Rinna said. I gestured for her to explain while I pulled my own helmet on.

"Naka has returned to the eastern gate in a panic," she said. "A ship crashed nearby while she was out, only a few kilometers from the enclave, and a second one followed."

Rinna gave us both her most serious look.

"She claimed the second ship was Imperial."

A muttered curse forced its way through my lips. My mind raced at the implications. A Remnant ship this far from Imperial territory violated nearly every treaty they had. There were few reasons I could think of for them to risk such reprisals, and none of them were good.

"Unfortunate," the Forgemaster said. "But not unanticipated."

"No, it's not. We need to move." I gestured for them both to follow and led the way out of the room. Turning to the Forgemaster, I spoke. "Rally the clans, get men on the walls and prepare the defenses."

"Of course. You are going to confront them directly?"

I nodded.

"Rinna, with me, we're talking to Naka."

"This way." Rinna stepped ahead and, once we'd left the Forge, broke into a run that I hurried to follow. Behind us, the Forgemaster started bellowing orders, sending a surge of activity through the clearing.

The streets of the enclave filled as we ran. The alarm began to sound and Mandalorians of all clans rushed to their posts. I stayed behind Rinna and let her make a path.

"What do we know?" I had to shout to be heard over the alarms and controlled chaos in the streets.

"There's a large plume of smoke to the southeast," she said, just as loudly. "Beyond that, not much. Spaceport Control confirmed two vessels came down in that direction, but they could not read their IFF transponders and neither vessel responded to hails."

I nodded.

"Understood." We rounded the last corner to the gate, to find Naka standing to the side with one of the guards. We pushed through the people assembling nearby, and Rinna had to duck under a particularly low-flying boot as its owner rocketed up to the battlements.

"Naka!" My voice barely managed to carry over the noise. She turned, blinked, and rushed over to meet us. I nodded a distracted greeting at the guard that followed, then turned my attention fully to her. "You saw the ships come down?"

"Y-yes," she said. She fidgeted for a moment and at my prompting, continued. "Bhay and Mara were sparring again, out by the lake, and teaching me some tricks. There was a big boom and something fell out of the sky. I couldn't see it through the smoke, but it made the ground shake. Mara said it must've been a ship."

"What happened then?" I asked when she fell silent. Naka bit her lip and gave me a nervous look.

"Mara said we had to help them, so we grabbed our stuff and started toward the smoke," she said. I shook my head with a sigh. Of course she did.

"That's when the second ship arrived?"

"Yeah." Naka nodded. "We had just made it to the hill when we heard a ship coming down. I thought they were coming to help their friends, but as soon as she saw it, Bhay pulled Mara and I down into the grass. She kept us there until it had landed on the other side of the hill. She said it was an Imperial ship and we needed to tell you about it."

Naka lapsed into silence again, and a thought occurred to me. I looked around to confirm what I already knew and sighed.

"Naka, where's Bhay and Mara?"

"They, uhh..." She squirmed uncomfortably and refused to look at me. When she continued, it was more of a question than anything else. "They're at home?"

"Naka." I gave her a very direct look. "Where are they?"

She deflated.

"Bhay told me to come back and warn everyone, while they inves-" Her brow furrowed and she forced the clearly-unfamiliar word out. "Investigated."

I suppressed a sigh. I should have known.

"I didn't want to, and I knew you'd be mad," she said. She gave me a beseeching look. "But Bhay yelled at me and I, I didn't-"

Tears welled in her eyes, and I sighed. One hand came up to rest on her shoulder.

"It's okay Naka, you did well." I squeezed her shoulder again and her sniffles began to slow. "Now, I have another job for you, and it's important, alright?"

She nodded and gave a long sniff. She looked up at me and made a sound of acknowledgement.

"Find your mother," I said. "Tell her what you told me, and that I'm going to bring them both back. Okay?"

"O-okay," she said. Her voice was still shaky, but she nodded and, at my gesture, rushed off into the Enclave.

I watched her disappear into the crowd, then turned to Rinna.

"Looks like we've got a rescue mission now, as well."

"Unfortunately," she said with a resigned sigh. "What is the plan?"

I looked around at the guards assembling behind the gate, picking out the handful with the skills I required. I stepped out into the open space and let my presence ripple outward. I gently prodded at each of the Mandalorians before me. Surprise ran through the crowd with it as they broke off their quiet mutterings and looked around.

With a clap of my hands, their attention landed firmly on me. I raised my voice, pointing to each of my picks in turn.

"You, you, and you, go with Rinna. Prep speeders and be ready to move in five." They saluted and all four of them hurried to the garage. I turned to the rest of the group. "The rest of you, get to your posts. The Imperials are unlikely to test us, not with only a single ship, but if they do, you are to remind them why they left Dantooine in the first place. You defend our homes and our future. This is the way."

"This is the way." A dozen voices sounded in chorus as they returned my salute.

(*)(*)(*)

"The smoke is getting thinner." The whine of the speeder nearly drowned out Rinna's voice. I shuffled away from her to make room and craned my head up to study the column of smoke.

"Yes," I said, shifting back to my original position, my back against her chestplate. "The grass hasn't caught at least. Small mercies."

"Is that a good sign or a bad one?"

"Both, probably," I said. We lapsed into silence for another half minute or so before I felt something brush against my senses. Annoyance, caution, and a healthy supply of anger roiled from the other side of a nearby hill. Smoke rose in an ominous cloud behind it. I tapped Rinna's arm and pointed. "Stop at the base of the hill. We're going on foot from there."

I felt her nod and, with a quick gesture to the other three behind us, she slid to a gentle stop exactly where I'd indicated. Everyone clambered off the speeders and gathered around me. With a quiet exhale, I opened myself to the web of life and let it flow through me.

"There's a full squad, at least," I said, my voice barely above a whisper. "Two patrols of two, three focused on the crashed ship, and the rest resting around it."

My senses rolled farther out and I felt a sense of cocky amusement that I would recognize anywhere. A bit of the tension I hadn't noticed building my shoulders relaxed at that. After another moment's searching, another presence flickered into clarity before fading back out again, and I felt the rest of the tension bleed away.

"The girls are fine, so far," I said. Rinna made a relieved sound. "But they're on the far side from us. The Imperials are focused on the ship though, and there's someone inside it. They're hurt."

"They pissed off the Imps," Zel Kryze, one of the guards I had recruited, said. He unslung the amban blaster from his shoulder and loaded a tibana shell into it. "That's reason enough to help."

I nodded.

"Here's the plan." I turned to the twins bearing the colors of Clan Kryze and pointed to the top of the hill. "Zel, Dos, overwatch. Keep it quiet until I go loud."

"You got it boss-man." Zel unslung the amban blaster from his shoulder. He nudged his sister, who nodded at me and drew her own blaster, and they both started up the hill in a crouch.

"Rinna, Zats, circle to the north and wait for my signal." They both gave quiet acknowledgements and complied, ducking into the grass and hurrying around the hill. Then I turned to the south and circled the hill the long way

It took only a minute or two, but it felt much longer before I rounded the hill and could see the crash site. It was a couple hundred meters away, at the end of a long scar torn into the grassland. Small embers still burned in the blackened grass that covered several meters all around the ship, but a trio of armored stormtroopers wearing standard-issue shipboard fire-suppressant tanks doused any of them that began to flare. More stormtroopers rested in the largest collection of rocks poking out of the grass nearby with the easy poise of soldiers, their weapons at hand and ready to spring into action at any moment, while their patrols maintained a perimeter forty meters out.

Most of my attention, however, was reserved for the trio of fully armored death troopers gathered around the rear cargo hatch. One of them had kneeled down, and was doing something to the door panel I couldn't see, while the other two kept their weapons trained on the door.

I waited a long moment, studying the Imperials and planning my approach, only for the kneeling death trooper to stand up and turn to the others. They had a brief exchange before one of the others nodded and the kneeler turned to the resting troopers.

"Rook!" I could barely hear the death trooper's bark. One of the stormtroopers shot to attention.

"Sir!"

The death trooper gave an order that I couldn't make out. The stormtrooper paused, his confusion obvious even if I couldn't feel it. He said something back, and got a blistering response.

"She slagged the console!" The death trooper snapped. The stormtrooper recoiled as if he'd been burned. "So we're breaching or we're not taking her at all. Now get me my charge!"

"Sir yes sir!" The stormtrooper snapped to attention and saluted. Without hesitation, he turned and sprinted toward the Remnant ship a couple hundred meters to the east. My eyes narrowed as I watched him run past a small boulder, and felt a spike of excitement and nervous fear. Then the stormtrooper vanished into the grass with a scream that cut off as quickly as it began.

The rest of the troopers were on their feet before he hit the ground.

"Damnit Bhay," I muttered, and surged into a run. At the same time, the crack of blaster fire rang out and two crimson bolts shot from the other side of the boulder. Both troopers in the patrol nearest the boulder took a bolt and collapsed. Mara's presence rippled again as she lost focus, but she didn't let that slow her.

Her next shot missed high on the separated death trooper. He ducked behind a rock and rushed back to the cover provided by the ship. The gathered stormtroopers followed suit, swiftly taking up fire positions behind the rocks and poured blaster fire at Bhay and Mara while they did it.

Bhay's surprise roiled in the air. She scurried back behind the boulder, bloody dagger in hand and just barely managed to dodge the opening barrage. Mara snapped off another shot that took one of the troopers in the chest before she too was forced back into cover.

"Suppress them!" one of the death troopers barked. He got a barked acknowledgment from the stormtroopers and they redoubled their fire on the boulder. He pulled something from his belt and made a quick series of hand gestures. The other two death troopers nodded and all three scurried around the crashed ship.

"Change of plans," I snapped into the commlink in my helmet. A rapid series of clicks heralded my team's assent. "Fire at will."

"With pleasure," Zel said. The unmistakable thwump of amban fire sounded in stereo and the second patrol of stormtroopers ceased to exist. At the same time, Rinna and Zats rose from the grass like avenging wraiths, their blades in hand and blasters already singing. I snapped off a quick shot of my own at one of the death troopers, and missed his helmet by a hair.

"Mandos!" With a cry, all three of the death troopers turned and opened fire on me without breaking stride. Blaster bolts sung in my senses, streaking through where I should have been in a deadly storm. I managed to dodge through the storm of fire, but the dance slowed my advance, and I wasn't about to accept that.

My return fire caught a glancing blow on one's arm, skittering off his armor with a crackling sound and leaving a small scar on the ship's hull behind him. It left him unharmed, but spoiled his aim, sending the bolt wide. I took the opening and slid into cover behind a rock.

Only for a thermal detonator to land in the grass beside me with a quiet thump.

Before I could even think about it, I'd thrown myself back and flung out a sloppy wave of power. The grenade had barely cleared the grass before it exploded. A wave of light and sound punched me in the chest, turning my desperate leap into an uncontrolled tumble.

A blaster bolt pinged off my beskar moments before I hit the ground. I managed to roll with the impact, narrowly dodging two more bolts before another thwump cracked out and one of the death troopers disintegrated.

The storm of fire cut out just long enough for me to roll behind another boulder. I took a moment to rest.

"Thanks, you two," I said. My breath heaved in slowly-steadying pants as blood leaked back into my adrenaline stream.

"Welcome," Dos said. Another amban shot rang out and I felt one of the stormtroopers vanish. I took the chance to reach out with my senses, and found Rinna and Zats carving through the troopers in white. Between the twins on the hill and Bhay and Mara's potshots, none of the stormtroopers were able to get out of cover long enough to stop them.

I nodded. They'd be able to handle that just fine.

On the other end, the two remaining death troopers had hunkered down behind a rock. Outrage, fear, and a grim determination swirled around them both. I let the savage grin fighting for my lips leak through.

This was gonna be fun.

With a final, steadying breath, I rolled out of cover and sprinted toward theirs. There was a flash of light and a curse as one of them pulled back a handheld mirror. A heartbeat later, he shoved his rifle out the same side.

A spray of blind-fired blaster bolts filled the air. Most of them missed completely, but I was nonetheless forced to dodge a couple, and even took one on my pauldron as I was coming out of a roll. It didn't stop me, but it did slow me down.

Enough so that, moments before I reached the boulder, a cry of triumph sounded from behind it, and both death troopers took off in a dead sprint. Momentum carried me to the top of the boulder, and my senses shrieked in warning.

I had just enough time to see a gutted and reassembled power cell glowing an ominous red before it exploded in a geyser of flame.

A growl forced itself out of my lips and with a thought, I flung myself forward, catapulting through the firestorm and trusting my armor to handle it. There was a moment of total chaos, my vision and hearing consumed by smoke and flame, and I was out the other side. I ignored the sound of the dry grass catching aflame and lined up my first shot.

It took my target in the back of the neck, in the soft space between helmet and breastplate. His partner tried to dodge my second shot, and his dive carried it straight into his armpit.

Then I turned my attention back to the fire.

I set my feet, reached out with my senses, and focused. My hands swept apart as my presence raced through the burning grass in an instant, then turned down. A low rumble began to build and small tremors raced beneath my feet. I let out one, last breath, and heaved.

The burning grass erupted from the ground at the head of a massive fountain of dirt. It rose nearly a meter into the air, then came crashing back down with a sound like thunder. For several long seconds I stood in a cloud of dust and smoke as it slowly faded away.

A ring of torn earth was all that was left of the fire.

I relaxed slightly and turned my attention to the rest of the battlefield, just in time for Rinna to pull her sword from the corpse of the last stormtrooper. She saw me approaching and nodded a greeting.

"Thank you for the distraction," she said when I was close enough. She finished cleaning and sheathed her sword. "The death troopers?"

"Dead," I said. I keyed my commlink. "Good job, everyone. Zats, take the twins and sweep their ship. I don't want any more surprises."

"As you command." Zats saluted then jogged up the hill before he and the twins disappeared behind it.

"Rinna, check the ship, see if you can figure out what they were after," I said. She nodded and moved to comply. Then I raised my voice, letting a hint of my anger slip into it, and turned to the two who had been trying to slip away. "As for you two..."

They froze. I fixed them with my best glare and waved them forward. They gave each other a nervous look and walked over.

"You two are going to explain why you thought it was a good idea to attack a Remnant kill team on your own."

"We had to!" Bhay said. She scowled at me. Mara nodded beside her.

"You had to," I said. My voice dripped with sarcasm and disdain. "Why, exactly, did you have to?"

"They were gonna kill her!" Mara said. I felt one of my eyebrows slide up. I looked between them.

"Kill who?"

"The lady in the ship!" Mara snapped. She waved a hand at the crashed ship. "The plan was to scout and find out what the Imperials were after. And we did!"

"Yup!" Bhay sounded more than a little smug. "They were more focused on the fire and never noticed us, and they liked to talk. On the ship is an escaped prisoner of theirs or something, and they were trying to take her back."

"They'd pumped the ship full of gas and were going to carry her off after it knocked her out." Mara took the reins back easily enough. "But she'd fried the door controls before that happened, so they couldn't get it open."

Mara gave me a pleading look.

"They were gonna blow the ship open and just hope she survived it!"

I blew out a heavy breath.

"And what," I said. "Would have stopped them from doing that anyway after you two were dead?"

They blinked in unison and glanced at each other.

"You would?" Mara asked more than said after a long pause.

"You got lucky this time," I said with another sigh. "But that won't always be the case. You need to think before you act, to plan for victory. I won't always be there."

They deflated.

"Yes Kuiil," they said together.

"But," I said. "This time, we were, and you may well have saved her life. And you held your own against trained stromtroopers. Well done."

Small smiles began to touch their lips. I sensed Rinna's approach and turned to her.

"There is indeed someone inside," Rinna said. She held up a collection of wires and plasteel slightly larger than her fist. "This bored a hole in the hull and pumped in an anaesthetic gas. I can see a body through the hole, but the door is unresponsive."

I nodded.

"Okay, stand back." I waved Rinna to stand over by the girls and turned my attention to the ship. My presence expanded out to cover it and I took a moment to center myself. I gave a sharp tug with one hand.

With an ear-piercing shriek of tearing metal, the door flew off the ship and landed heavily in the scarred earth.

"Stay here," I told the three women, and climbed into the hole. The gas was visible in the air, limiting my visibility, but the woman wasn't very far in. I found her only a few meters in, and when I did, I stopped, blinked, and shook my head. "Of course."

Lying insensate on the floor of the ship was a female Nautolan in the tattered but unmistakable robes of a Jedi.


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

I never enjoyed hospitals. The soft, gentle colors. The persistent, quiet hum of the machines. The too-sterile and sharp smell. The pervasive echoes of old pain, desperation, and grief. I'd never found a hospital that was pleasant to be in. And the enclave's medical bay, a small building with bacta tanks, a few beds, and a medical droid to manage it, was no different.

"The patient is stable at this time. There appear to be no long-term complications arising from the sedative." The droid's voice was flat and mechanical, without even a token attempt at bedside manner. "According to projections, it will be seventeen to twenty-two more hours until she awakens."

"Less than one," I corrected it without looking away from the bed. The Jedi lay motionless, but she blazed in my senses regardless. Her presence had steadily grown over the last day and a half, swelling into a beacon I could not ignore.

Though not for lack of trying.

I had cast myself out, letting my presence blend and drift along the web of life, with only the barest attention paid to her, or even my physical shell. I roamed through the very soul of the enclave. As always, I reveled in the sensation, in the vibrancy and life of my father's greatest work.

"I find no medical reasoning to support this conclusion," the droid said after a lengthy pause.

"The Jedi are sorcerors," I said. "Medical reasoning doesn't apply."

"I find no medical reasoning to support this conclusion."

I ignored it and, after a minute of silence, the droid puttered over to the wall and entered standby mode. Silence reigned once more, at once both oppressive and fragile.

Until the Jedi's presence began to stir.

The signs were subtle at first. Enough so that I almost didn't recognize it, but once I did my full attention shifted to her. I could feel her awareness beginning to congeal, breaking through the stillness of her healing trance.

"She's waking up."

"I am en route." The Forgemaster's reply came through my commlink. "If she awakens before I arrive, be polite."

I grunted and waved a hand dismissively. I could almost hear the sigh she refused to let through.

"We will get answers," she said instead. "And compensation. In time."

A tap of a button sent an affirmative click through the commlink before I disconnected. The Jedi's steady breathing, the same borderline fatally slow pace she'd maintained since I'd pulled her from her ship, became the only sound. Her awareness rose, agonizingly slowly, to the surface, the last traces of the healing trance fading away, but still she did not move. Even her breathing hardly changed.

"You can stop pretending," I said when boredom began to set in.

The bed erupted with a curse. The thin sheet was flung into the air, obstructing my view for a few brief seconds. The Jedi rolled away from me, transitioning smoothly into a flip when she reached the edge of the bed. Her tendrils made gentle slapping sounds against her shoulders, and confusion began to seep into her presence.

I waited for the sheet to fall, coincidentally giving her the time to work through her surprise, only to shake my head when I realized she'd moved far enough away I couldn't see her anyway. So I hauled myself up onto the bed.

The Jedi stood in her underclothes a couple meters away, slowly relaxing out of a combat stance. She had a slim, dancer's build, and it was exceedingly obvious blue was her natural skin color, given the sheer volume of it on display. Her large, dark eyes slid right over me, only to pause and snap back a moment later. I didn't bother to fight the grin forming under my helmet and waved at her.

She blinked, disbelief beginning to tinge her confusion.

"Wha-" She cut herself off with a shake of her head and straightened. Discipline asserted itself and she pushed down the questions I could practically taste in her presence. A bit of the tension in her frame relaxed as well, as she took in my armor. Then she gave me a shallow bow.

"My apologies, Mando, you startled me." She gave me an almost accusatory look. "I do not sense you."

I shrugged.

"Since I am not chained in a cell, I take it you were able to drive off my pursuers?"

"Yes," I said. I grabbed her clothes from the small basket hanging from the foot of the bed, balled them up and threw it at her. "Put some clothes on, before we get into that."

She caught the robe with a surprised expression and looked down on herself. A flush spread across her cheeks and she hurried to pull it on.

"Quite."

"The Remnant kill team that followed you down is dead," I said while she was getting dressed. "Any more than that, I cannot say."

"Unfortunate, but inevitable. Thank you," she said. She tightened her sash, straightened and turned her focus back to me. She paused, struggling with herself for a long moment, before the confusion, curiousity, and even a hint of fear stirring within her won out.

"How are you doing that?"

"Doing what?" The tinge of amusement in my voice made it perfectly clear to both of us I already knew the answer.

"That!" She waved a hand in my general direction with a frown. "I can't feel you in the Force. I can see you, and hear you, but in the Force, there's... nothing. There's not even a void, there's just nothing there."

"You... you don't exist. You _can't_ exist!"

"Can't I?" I cocked my head. I pulled my senses back in, walling myself off from the world around me once more. She twitched, her eyes going wide.

"Wh- I can feel you!" she said. I chuckled and opened myself once more, falling back into the web of life and pulling another frown from her. "How is this possible?"

"The Jedi are not the only wielders of sorcery." The Forgemaster's voice as she stepped into the room was calm and placid, and gave no sign of the disapproval and mild anger simmering beneath the surface. Her steps were as precise as everything else she did, a steady rhythm that carried her deceptively quickly over to us. I let my retort wither and hopped off the bed to take a position at her side. Her gaze moved around the room and lingered on me, just long enough to make her point, then focused back on the Jedi.

"You are awake. Good," the Forgemaster said. "I am the Forgemaster. I speak for the _Mando'ade_."

The Jedi frowned at me for a long moment then looked to the Forgemaster, though her eyes flicked back to me every few seconds. She brought her hands together before her chest and bowed.

"I am Jedi Master Kaz Lash. You and your people have my thanks. I would be dead, or worse, if not for your assistance."

"Yes." The Forgemaster delivered the word dispassionately. The Jedi, Kaz I supposed, sagged slightly. "You will tell us what led to the necessity."

"I owe you that much," Kaz said with a nod. She walked over and sat down on the bed with a tired breath.

"I live- _lived_ on Ithor." She corrected herself with a faint scowl. "I do not know how the Remnant found me, or how they made it so far into Republic space, but they did. They ambushed me in my home, and it was only by the will of the Force that I escaped."

"I made it to my ship and fled the planet, but they followed. Every time I emerged from hyperspace, they were minutes behind, if not less. It did not take long before I knew I wasn't going to be able to lose them."

"So I went to the only system in the sector they might hesitate to follow." Kaz flashed a small smile and gestured at us. "It seems I made the correct choice."

The Forgemaster considered Kaz's story for a long moment before she spoke.

"You have wielded us as a shield from your enemies. There is a debt incurred."

A surprised look flashed across Kaz's face.

"You want to charge me for killing the Remnant?"

"It is a matter of honor, not coin." The Forgemaster regarded the other woman levelly. "We acted as your shield against a shared enemy. Honor demands payment commensurate to the service. This is the way."

"You can start with telling us why the Remnant would risk restarting a war everyone knows they can't win just to capture you," I said. Kaz reluctantly nodded.

"It was not me they were after. I was the keeper of a holocron, a Jedi artifact from before the Empire's purge. It is a... database, of the wisdom of the ancient Jedi." Her eyes narrowed and her hands clenched into fists. "They took it from me before I was able to flee."

She swallowed her anger with a small shudder.

"I do not know why they wanted it. Master Surik died thousands of years before the Empire," she said. The Forgemaster's presence writhed. Shock and fear flared for an instant, so quickly I almost thought I'd imagined it, before iron will reasserted itself. "Her holocron is valuable, yes, but for historic purposes, and only to the Jedi."

"Obviously not," the Forgemaster said. There was no sign of her brief waver in her voice. Kaz made a small defeated gesture.

"So it would seem. Regardless, I need to get it back." Kaz stood and, with a flick of her hand, her lightsaber flew out of the basket and landed in her grasp. She clipped it to her belt and bowed deeply. "I apologize for bringing my troubles to your door. You did not ask to join my fight, but you did anyway. I am in your debt, and I will see it repaid. I will make contact with the Order and arrange for payment."

"You are leaving." There was no question in the Forgemaster's voice.

"Yes. Whatever their reasons, I cannot allow them to keep that holocron. I must give chase before the trail grows cold."

"With what ship?" I asked. Her brows furrowed.

"The Order will be able to provide a new transport... eventually." She visibly lost steam and slumped toward the end. She fell silent for a long moment, then her eyes flicked from me to the Forgemaster. A surge of realization swept through her presence and I could practically see the idea taking hold in her mind. She straightened and turned fully to the Forgemaster, her gaze firm.

"Forgemaster, your people are peerless hunters. It was not a coincidence my flight brought me here, to you." I rolled my eyes, even as I frowned. "I would hire you to assist me in my hunt."

A leaden weight formed in my gut. I looked at the Forgemaster.

"A common request," she said. If she was surprised, I sensed no sign of it. "What is your proposal?"

"I need a tracker, someone who can lead me to the holocron before it disappears into Imperial space, and a ship. The contract will be to assist me in recovering the holocron, and to deliver it to the Jedi Temple on Ossus if I fall before it's recovered."

"And in exchange?" the Forgemaster prompted when Kaz fell silent. Kaz worried at her lip.

"I can promise a reasonable sum of credits," she said. "But there are... limits to the funds I can draw upon."

The Forgemaster made a considering sound, while I swallowed an immediate rejection.

"You would die to see this task completed," she said after a moment's thought. "And your debt still stands. Further favors from you have little value."

"The Order will honor the arrangement," Kaz said without hesitation. "On my word as a Master."

"Then it shall be done." The Forgemaster didn't even try to hide the satisfaction in her tone. I gave her a sidelong look and suppressed the sigh building in my chest. "I will select a hunter from among my people, then we shall formalize the contract."

Relief swept through Kaz's presence.

"Rest and eat," the Forgemaster continued before Kaz could speak. "The hunt begins at dawn."

"Thank you," Kaz said. She sat back down on the bed. "I will be here, when you're ready."

The Forgemaster glanced down at me. I gave a reluctant nod and we both strode out of the room. The door slid closed with a faint pneumatic hiss, and a tense silence settled over the hallway. The only sound was the steady clack of our boots against the tiled floor.

I managed to hold my tongue for a whole ten seconds.

"What are you doing?" I asked. The private comm channel I'd opened prevented my voice from carrying outside of my helmet, but my voice barely rose above a whisper.

"Securing the favor of the Jedi," the Forgemaster said. Her tone was dry, and far calmer than my own. "And enlisting aid in stopping the Imperial Remnant. We cannot allow them to keep that holocron."

She gave me a very direct look.

"Jedi Master Meetra Surik is of special interest to the _Mando'ade_," she said.

It took another three steps before the meaning of her words became clear. I stopped in my tracks.

"Malachor." The word left me in a breath. Denial rose instinctively, but I pushed it down. The Empire had been more than willing to destroy planets before, and they had even fewer reasons not to now.

"Yes. The weapon that cast down Mandalore the Ultimate would tip the balance of power firmly in the Remnant's favor." She gave me another pointed look. "As you well know."

I sighed and nodded.

"You're right. I wasn't thinking clearly."

"A Jedi was involved," she said. I opened my mouth to retort, then thought better of it and just nodded again. She continued. "It is time to get over it."

I shrugged, unwilling to concede the point, but unable to contest it either.

"You will have to. You will find the holocron with her."

"What? No! Bad idea," I said. I waved one hand back at the medical bay. "Did you miss that?"

The Forgemaster stopped and stared at me. I returned it as best I could.

"You're right. We need to stop the Imperials," I said. "But don't send me with her. Mara's bound to pick up some bad habits from her, let alone whatever will happen when I inevitably poke her too hard."

"There is no other," the Forgemaster said. "The enemy is a trained and prepared team capable of subduing a Jedi Master. A sufficient strike team would leave the enclave's defenses undermanned, as well as attract every eye in the region. Our quarry would flee long before battle could be closed."

Names and faces flashed through my mind as I raced through the roster. It didn't take me long to come to the same conclusion as the Forgemaster.

"The contract has been taken," she said. "The holocron cannot be allowed to elude us. This is the way."

"_N'jate!_ Fine!" I shook my head and looked at her. "I have one condition. I need another set of whistling birds."

"As you wish."

(*)(*)(*)

The next morning found Mara and I waiting outside the enclave's main gate. Pre-dawn winds dragged icy fingers through the air I did my best to ignore. My hands ran through a final equipment check, the motions so ingrained I barely noticed I was doing it. Mara shivered beside me, though from the cold or excitement I couldn't tell.

"Ready?" My voice carried easily in the quiet.

"Yeah." Mara shrugged one shoulder, causing her new amban blaster to rattle gently against her armor. "Carrying this thing is gonna take some getting used to, but I've got everything else down."

I paused in my det charge count and turned to look at her. She caught my look and cocked an eyebrow.

"What?"

"Blaster," I said, and went back to checking my equipment. She made a disgruntled sound, pulled out her pistol and removed and replaced the powerpack. Then made a show of checking it.

"It's fine," she said after a cursory inspection and re-holstered the gun.

"Rifle." Mara rolled her eyes, but pulled the rifle around and worked the action. She glanced through the opening, closed it again, then slung it back over her shoulder. Her free hand tapped the brace of shells wrapped around her waist.

"Also fine."

"Armor." I finished my own armor inspection with a flex of my hand. A dozen darts slid smoothly out of their tubes, then back again when I relaxed. The Forgemaster had been good to her word. It had been some time since we could afford to spare enough _beskar _for a full set of whistling birds, and I enjoyed the feeling it gave.

Beside me, Mara rapped her knuckles against the plastoid plate over her chest and pulled against the shoulder and leg plates. She finished by holding up her _beskar _vambraces and making a show of inspecting them. Most of the weapon emplacements in them were empty still, but the grapnel it carried was properly checked. She made a point to flash the stylized _cathan'dare_ skull engraved on the wrist at me.

"It's _fine_," she said at last. "I double checked everything before I went to bed."

"Chest plate, bottom right strap," I said without looking. Mara blinked, felt for the strap and flushed. She hurriedly connected and cinched the strap tight.

"You can never be too prepared," I said, and I made sure she could hear my smile in my voice. The poorly-stifled chuckle from one of the gate guards punctuated my point nicely.

"R-right," she said with a cough. She looked away and fidgeted, calming down moments before the gates swung open. Kaz walked out, flanked by a man in the armor of Clan Kryze. She strode over to us, while her escort nodded at me, turned and walked back into the enclave, pulling the gate closed behind him.

"Mornin'," Mara said with a wave.

"Good morning," Kaz said. She smiled at Mara then bowed to me. I nodded.

"I'm Kuiil, that's Mara," I said. I glanced at Mara. "And this is the client, Kaz Lash."

"It's good to see you on your feet," Mara said. "I was worried for a bit when we pulled you out of your ship."

Kaz studied Mara for a long moment.

"Then I owe you my thanks," she said. She turned a quietly demanding stare on me.

I ignored it entirely.

"Come," I said. I waved for them both to follow, and headed for the starport. Mara fell into step immediately, while Kaz's gaze bored into my helmet until, with a small sigh, she followed. Mara and Kaz engaged in small talk as we went, mostly discussing Mara's time in the enclave, and I was content to ignore it, all the way onto the _Razor Crest_.

I left them in the hold, letting them talk while I performed my pre-flight routine. A few minutes' work verified the integrity of the _Crest_'s systems and supplies. Satisfied, I stepped outside. A quick visual inspection showed nothing amiss, so I came back on board, just as Mara was finishing a story.

"And so Rinna marked my armor with this," Mara said, pointing at the engraving on her vambrace. The engraved skull caught the lights of the hold and seemed to leer. "Isn't it awesome?!"

"How long ago was this?" Kaz asked, her tone matching her expression in a carefully neutral way I knew I really wasn't going to like.

"Bit over a month." Mara shrugged and grinned. "I've gotten a lot better since then too!"

"That is... good to hear," Kaz said. She gave Mara a strained smile, even as her eyes flicked to me. "Would yo-"

"Get us into orbit, Mara." Kaz swallowed whatever she was going to say and settled back at my interruption. "And prep the navicomp. I'll let you know where we're headed after I've talked to the client."

Mara glanced from me to Kaz then back. Her presence writhed against my senses and she nodded. She hurried over to the ladder up to the cockpit, but paused at the base to level a sharp glare at Kaz.

"Before you start yelling about my age," she said, and her presence flared with a simmering anger. "I made my choice. Given half a chance, I'd do it a thousand times over."

She smirked viciously.

"And you aren't as subtle as you think."

Kaz blinked as Mara disappeared in the cockpit. Surprise and confusion warred against outrage within her.

"That..." She trailed off.

"Was accurate," I said. Kaz flinched and looked at me, a measure of actual contrition in her gaze and presence. I waved a hand dismissively. "But irrelevant. Your answers are not."

Kaz took a moment to center herself, and with a long exhale, nodded.

"Ask your questions then."

"Do you know where they wanted to take the holocron?" I had to raise my voice slightly over the sound of the engines spinning up.

"No," she said with a small scowl. "They were well trained, professionals. They never mentioned a destination in my presence."

"What about their ships? The team sent after you flew an old Corellian freighter. Were they all the same model?"

"No. They had three ships total, each a different model. The only one I recognized was from SoroSuub, but I do not know the model. I did, however, catch it and the third ship leaving from Ithor. They were headed toward Imperial space."

I nodded, mulling over the information. The lack of uniformity would make them stand out, assuming they travelled together, but even so, with only two ships there were any number of potential routes back to the Remnant.

The only bright side was that the border was so heavily watched that it would take weeks to make it all the way through without kicking off another war.

"Ithor it is then," I said. The gentle rumble of the engines cut out as I did, leaving the _Crest_ in a stable orbit. Kaz blinked and frowned.

"They already have a four day lead," she said. "This does not seem wise."

"They could be anywhere from Ord Mantell to Mindor by now," I said. I walked over to the ladder and, after gesturing her to follow, hopped up the rungs. Mara spun the co-pilot's chair around.

"Where to?"

"Ithor," I said and climbed into the pilot's seat. Mara nodded and started punching instructions into the navicomp, while Kaz pulled herself into the cockpit. I left the flying to Mara and nodded at Kaz.

"Blindly chasing the Imperials will just give them the time they need to cross the border," I told her. "So we're going to the beginning and picking up the trail from there."

"I can get you access to Ithorian sensor records," Kaz said with a frown. "But you already know what they would tell you."

I shrugged.

"I'll want to see them regardless, but that isn't what we're after."

"What is?"

A small chuckle bubbled out of my throat, and I let the smugness I felt seep into my voice.

"Perspective."


End file.
